The Notre Dame Fighting Irish looked like the return of Markus Burton had helped them figure out their identity.
While Marcus Shrewsberry’s squad wasn’t going to knock off the Dukes and Houstons of the college basketball world, they were a team that could handle their business against the Georgia Techs and Boston Colleges. And certainly a team that could handle its business against the Miami Hurricanes.
While not playing perfect basketball in the first half on Saturday, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish still looked like a team that could handle its business against the worst team in the conference. And then the bottom fell out. And Marcus Shrewsberry’s Notre Dame basketball team suffered its most embarrassing, inexcusable loss since he arrived in South Bend.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s latest inexcusable loss is worst yet
Granted, Shrewsberry has only been in town for two years. The loss to a Miami team that entered the game 0-10 in the ACC and with just four wins on the year is the worst the Notre Dame basketball team has had in several years.
The loss is especially bad for Shrewsberry because there have quite frankly, been too many of these.
Remember last year when the Irish lost by 10 to Western Carolina? How about when they lost by 20 to The Citadel? The loss to Georgetown last year was pretty bad too, but at least Shrewsberry had the excuse of it being year one and his team being short on bodies, let alone talent.
This year was supposed to be about the team building on what it learned about itself last year. Getting outscored by 17 by the worst team to play in the ACC in quite a while seems like someone skipped class. Not a lot of learning going on in a loss like that.
The biggest question now is just how long the Notre Dame Fighting Irish program is going to be about one step forward and two steps back. Pretty soon, these kinds of losses need to be much rarer.