Notre Dame basketball 'discipline has to be better:' Micah Shrewsberry

When this season began, Notre Dame basketball fans knew that Micah Shrewsberry's first team was going to suffer through some growing pains. However, that doesn't make blowing a big first half lead and then playing poorly in overtime any less embarrassing. To Shrewsberry's credit, he seems to understand this.

After roaring out to a 35-26 lead over former Big East conference rival Georgetown, Notre Dame struggled down the stretch. But what went wrong on Saturday afternoon was more than just getting outscored 46-33 the rest of the way.

Shrewsberry believes the issue on Saturday was an unfortunate lack of discipline and it's become a pattern he needs to find a way to stop. “At the end of the first half and the start of the second half was terrible on our part,” the Notre Dame basketball coach said after the game. “I thought they really pushed the ball in transition. I thought their bigs ran the court really hard and our bigs were behind the play and late to get in position, so they got some fouls."

It was the overtime that really showed that this is a team that doesn't always have the right kind of discipline. That was demonstrated in the OT when Georgetown was able to score the winning goals and Notre Dame came up with a play that had the ball in the hands of a 20 percent shooter on the season.

Notre Dame basketball stumbles thanks to lack of discipline

“We were trying to get to a right-hand drive,” explained Shrewsberry about his team's last few plays. “That’s where I think our discipline has to be better as a group. There were a lot of breakdowns in communication or breakdowns in trust. It was set up for right-hand drive and the whole side of the court cleared. We were definitely not looking for what happened.” 

The question now is whether or not Notre Dame basketball can learn from this, or continue dropping games they should win because of a lack of discipline.