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Hey, not every game can be the greatest game in the history of the Carrier Dome. Notre Dame was suppose to be a top 25 team (or at least close) coming into the season, but they proved to be disappointing even before their best player (Jerami Grant's brother) flunked out of school. This Notre Dame team seems to have most of the same elements of previous successful Notre Dame teams, a good low post scorer, a few good three point shooters, a veteran point guard, and a methodical mistake-free tempo. But they do just about everything, from defense, to rebounding, to shooting, just a little worse than they need to if they want to get a lot of wins.
How Notre Dame defended Syracuse:
Put yourself in Mike Brey's shoes. You have a single day to put together a game plan for Syracuse, and in that day you also have the sizable distraction of having to travel from Indiana to New York. The Syracuse you are familiar with is the Syracuse of MCW and Triche, Jardine and Waiters. Teams that attack the basket far more often than this years team does, and shoot far fewer jumpers. Then you watch the tape from Syracuse/Duke. You see Syracuse relentlessly attack the basket on almost every play, and do it with an amazing amount of success.
You examine your own roster and you say to yourself, Sherman and Knight are not going to get any more blocks than Jefferson and Parker did (which, incidentally, was zero) but they are a lot stronger and bulkier than Duke's front line. So you decide to play to your strength and clog the lane, hoping your muscle will keep Syracuse out of lane and prevent them from getting easy baskets.
Brey accomplished this by playing a 2-3 zone where all three front court players camped inside the lane. Now I don't want to make it seem like Brey was unaware that both Ennis and Cooney are shooting over 40% from three, because he clearly wasn't, and to stop them he told the two guards at the top of the zone to extend out to NBA range and beyond when necessary.
This left Notre Dame in a very strange configuration that at first I didn't identify as a 2-3. Usually one guard would extend way out beyond the three point line to contest a shot, while the other guard usually stayed in a more typical 2-3 formation, but at times both guards extended out. In contrast, the three front court players never strayed from clogging the lane.
If you've paid any attention to Syracuse's defense over the last few years, you know that while Syracuse plays what is called a 2-3 zone, most of the time it actually looks like a 4-1 zone. There is a good reason for this, if you don't play this way you leave yourself vulnerable to three pointers.
In this case, the willingness of Notre Dame's guards to extend out to contest shots was not enough. A few simple ball screens was all Syracuse needed to do to get Trevor Cooney a few wide open looks - and the next thing you know, Cooney had four threes, and Notre Dame was forced to abandon their 2-3 zone in favor of man to man. By that time it was too late, and Cooney was already red hot.
Notre Dame tried to guard him with a freshman which seemed like a mistake, and sure enough Cooney managed to get open every so often, and made Notre Dame pay just about every time. It turned out to be just enough to give Syracuse the lead for the duration of the game.
How Notre Dame attacked Syracuse's zone:
Notre Dame is famous for the burn offense (named burn because they intentionally run the shot clock close to zero before shooting) which they developed the last time they lost one of their star players for the season.
The key to running a slow down offense is efficiency, and historically Notre Dame has been exceptionally efficient under Brey, and virtually turn over free for as long as Eric Atkins has been around (which I swear is so long he must be Digger Phelps grandfather).
The second key to running a slow down offense, is to be able to stop the other team on defense, or at least stop them from being as efficient as you are.
To start the game, Notre burned a lot of clock and was able to be very efficient getting the ball inside to Sherman, who hit a few really difficult hook shots against Christmas.
Notre Dame had the lead and was looking good until two things happened that completely derailed them.
First, Jerami Grant absolutely changed the game defensively.
The key was helping Christmas in the post. While Christmas fought with Sherman for position, Grant swooped in from the weak side for a couple absolutely amazing and game changing blocks.
After a hot start, Sherman did nothing on offense for the rest of the game outside of hitting some free throws late on a couple of questionable calls.
Second, Notre Dame's defense let Cooney get hot. Again, to win a slow pace game, you have to be more efficient than your opponent. Cooney's effective field goal percentage (which gives more credit to 3's than 2's because 3's are worth more points) was 103.3%. As you might imagine, its hard to beat a team when the guy who is scoring the vast majority of their points is scoring with over 100% efficiency.
By halftime Syracuse had a 13 point lead. Which is a much bigger lead than it sounds in such a slow pace game. The score was 31-18, so Syracuse was almost doubling Notre Dame's output.
To Brey's credit, he understood that Notre Dame had no chance to overcome a 13 point deficit using the burn offense, so he completely abandoned it.
Notre Dame increased the tempo and it worked for them. They did pretty much all the same things they always do, but they did them a lot faster. It allowed them to score 37 points in the second, as opposed to 18 in the first half.
The biggest difference between the first half and the second half (besides tempo) was shooting. Notre Dame was 1-6 from three in the first half, and in the second half they were 5-12. Shooting more from three was the right move for them. None of their threes were what I would call wide open, but it was clear that the focus of Syracuse's defense was to stop Sherman inside rather than to stop the shooters, and even Grant, as long as he is, can't be in both places at once.
Brey made all the right halftime adjustments and the game turned into a war of attrition – as all Syracuse's games have been lately. This one felt a little different though, because Ennis was not able to take over the game late. I don't know if he is sick, if his ankle is bothering him, or if he's exhausted (its probably a combination of all three) but he looked like he was running on empty in this game.
Fair too, had a terrible day. This happened for two reasons. One, his mid range shot simply was not falling. Two, Notre Dame was clogging the lane and not letting him anywhere near the basket. If Fair could have gotten a few mid range shots to fall, he might have loosened Notre Dame's defense up, but he couldn't do it, and as it was every time he tried to get to the basket Notre Dame was there waiting, and they did an excellent job of forcing him to take difficult (almost unmakable) shots.
Without Fair and Ennis (our usual go to options) I thought the offense looked a little lost. Obviously Cooney picked up most of the slack left by those two, but I thought Grant made arguably the two biggest baskets of the game. One, when Notre Dame cut the lead to three and seemed to have all the momentum. Grant created this shot all by himself, worming his way to the basket and forcing the ball through the hoop under duress. The next was another low post basket to push the lead from five to seven with about a minute left in the game (pretty much icing it in my opinion).
Player Evaluations:
Ennis: He just was not himself this game. His assist totals are inflated because Cooney hit everything. In reality, Ennis created very little offense. This week off should help him more than anybody else.
Cooney: I was talking before the game about the possibility of this being a trap game. My opinion was, it would not be a trap game. Although looking back I think it was. Syracuse did not seem to have much in the tank as a team. However, I did mention that Notre Dame is so bad that Syracuse probably only needs one guy to get hot to secure the win. I had no idea how right I was going to be. The first question every coach needs to ask when the play Syracuse is, how are we going to stop Cooney? You saw in this game what happens when the opposing team does not go out of their way to make Cooney's life hard. That is one of the reasons why SU won't see much zone at all this year. Probably the only team that could get away with zoning Syracuse is Syracuse.
Fair: He really needed to be able to hit a few mid range jumpers in this one, but he couldn't. It was probably Fair's first bad game of the season. He's usually good for about one a year, so he was due. I'm glad he got it out of the way against Notre Dame.
Grant: He seemed to shy away from contact offensively until the very end when we needed it most. I remember seeing Warrick do the same thing his sophomore year during back to back games. My opinion is, it means Grant gets worn down and needs to get a little stronger. Despite all this, he was the unsung hero of the game. The one thing I most want to see from Grant is him using his athletic gifts to affect the game defensively, and in this game his defense was almost as key as Cooney's shooting.
Christmas: He had a battle underneath with Sherman (who is surprisingly good) and he fought hard. Christmas eventually fouled out, but I thought fouls 3 and 4 were bad calls, so I can't blame him for that. I wish his teammates got him the ball on offense more, because the few times Christmas got touches good things seemed to happen. The only person to get Christmas a good look down low was Cooney, and Christmas repaid the debt with two tremendous assists to Cooney that lead to 6 points. As Christmas improves, the rest of the team needs to improve at finding him in the right spots. If they would have in this game, I bet Christmas could have helped with some of the offensive woes.
Gbinije: Played good defense and made a three, then made a terrible turnover and came out of the game for good. When Cooney is playing like this, Gbinije is bound to sit the bench a lot, because even though he fills in for Ennis too, he's not a point guard.
Roberson: His talent is evident. Did anybody else notice him grab a rebound about three feet above the rim? The fact that he played against Duke leads me to believe that he had a good week of practice and is showing improvement. The jumper he hit looked pretty sweet, and I saw him hit a number of those in warm ups before the game. I expect him to continue to play small minutes with the chance for more as his play and game situations dictate.
Keita: Got in the game and played his usual good defense, but Christmas was a better match up for Notre Dames big, strong, plodding centers.
Hey, not every game can be the greatest game in the history of the Carrier Dome. Notre Dame was suppose to be a top 25 team (or at least close) coming into the season, but they proved to be disappointing even before their best player (Jerami Grant's brother) flunked out of school. This Notre Dame team seems to have most of the same elements of previous successful Notre Dame teams, a good low post scorer, a few good three point shooters, a veteran point guard, and a methodical mistake-free tempo. But they do just about everything, from defense, to rebounding, to shooting, just a little worse than they need to if they want to get a lot of wins.
How Notre Dame defended Syracuse:
Put yourself in Mike Brey's shoes. You have a single day to put together a game plan for Syracuse, and in that day you also have the sizable distraction of having to travel from Indiana to New York. The Syracuse you are familiar with is the Syracuse of MCW and Triche, Jardine and Waiters. Teams that attack the basket far more often than this years team does, and shoot far fewer jumpers. Then you watch the tape from Syracuse/Duke. You see Syracuse relentlessly attack the basket on almost every play, and do it with an amazing amount of success.
You examine your own roster and you say to yourself, Sherman and Knight are not going to get any more blocks than Jefferson and Parker did (which, incidentally, was zero) but they are a lot stronger and bulkier than Duke's front line. So you decide to play to your strength and clog the lane, hoping your muscle will keep Syracuse out of lane and prevent them from getting easy baskets.
Brey accomplished this by playing a 2-3 zone where all three front court players camped inside the lane. Now I don't want to make it seem like Brey was unaware that both Ennis and Cooney are shooting over 40% from three, because he clearly wasn't, and to stop them he told the two guards at the top of the zone to extend out to NBA range and beyond when necessary.
This left Notre Dame in a very strange configuration that at first I didn't identify as a 2-3. Usually one guard would extend way out beyond the three point line to contest a shot, while the other guard usually stayed in a more typical 2-3 formation, but at times both guards extended out. In contrast, the three front court players never strayed from clogging the lane.
If you've paid any attention to Syracuse's defense over the last few years, you know that while Syracuse plays what is called a 2-3 zone, most of the time it actually looks like a 4-1 zone. There is a good reason for this, if you don't play this way you leave yourself vulnerable to three pointers.
In this case, the willingness of Notre Dame's guards to extend out to contest shots was not enough. A few simple ball screens was all Syracuse needed to do to get Trevor Cooney a few wide open looks - and the next thing you know, Cooney had four threes, and Notre Dame was forced to abandon their 2-3 zone in favor of man to man. By that time it was too late, and Cooney was already red hot.
Notre Dame tried to guard him with a freshman which seemed like a mistake, and sure enough Cooney managed to get open every so often, and made Notre Dame pay just about every time. It turned out to be just enough to give Syracuse the lead for the duration of the game.
How Notre Dame attacked Syracuse's zone:
Notre Dame is famous for the burn offense (named burn because they intentionally run the shot clock close to zero before shooting) which they developed the last time they lost one of their star players for the season.
The key to running a slow down offense is efficiency, and historically Notre Dame has been exceptionally efficient under Brey, and virtually turn over free for as long as Eric Atkins has been around (which I swear is so long he must be Digger Phelps grandfather).
The second key to running a slow down offense, is to be able to stop the other team on defense, or at least stop them from being as efficient as you are.
To start the game, Notre burned a lot of clock and was able to be very efficient getting the ball inside to Sherman, who hit a few really difficult hook shots against Christmas.
Notre Dame had the lead and was looking good until two things happened that completely derailed them.
First, Jerami Grant absolutely changed the game defensively.
The key was helping Christmas in the post. While Christmas fought with Sherman for position, Grant swooped in from the weak side for a couple absolutely amazing and game changing blocks.
After a hot start, Sherman did nothing on offense for the rest of the game outside of hitting some free throws late on a couple of questionable calls.
Second, Notre Dame's defense let Cooney get hot. Again, to win a slow pace game, you have to be more efficient than your opponent. Cooney's effective field goal percentage (which gives more credit to 3's than 2's because 3's are worth more points) was 103.3%. As you might imagine, its hard to beat a team when the guy who is scoring the vast majority of their points is scoring with over 100% efficiency.
By halftime Syracuse had a 13 point lead. Which is a much bigger lead than it sounds in such a slow pace game. The score was 31-18, so Syracuse was almost doubling Notre Dame's output.
To Brey's credit, he understood that Notre Dame had no chance to overcome a 13 point deficit using the burn offense, so he completely abandoned it.
Notre Dame increased the tempo and it worked for them. They did pretty much all the same things they always do, but they did them a lot faster. It allowed them to score 37 points in the second, as opposed to 18 in the first half.
The biggest difference between the first half and the second half (besides tempo) was shooting. Notre Dame was 1-6 from three in the first half, and in the second half they were 5-12. Shooting more from three was the right move for them. None of their threes were what I would call wide open, but it was clear that the focus of Syracuse's defense was to stop Sherman inside rather than to stop the shooters, and even Grant, as long as he is, can't be in both places at once.
Brey made all the right halftime adjustments and the game turned into a war of attrition – as all Syracuse's games have been lately. This one felt a little different though, because Ennis was not able to take over the game late. I don't know if he is sick, if his ankle is bothering him, or if he's exhausted (its probably a combination of all three) but he looked like he was running on empty in this game.
Fair too, had a terrible day. This happened for two reasons. One, his mid range shot simply was not falling. Two, Notre Dame was clogging the lane and not letting him anywhere near the basket. If Fair could have gotten a few mid range shots to fall, he might have loosened Notre Dame's defense up, but he couldn't do it, and as it was every time he tried to get to the basket Notre Dame was there waiting, and they did an excellent job of forcing him to take difficult (almost unmakable) shots.
Without Fair and Ennis (our usual go to options) I thought the offense looked a little lost. Obviously Cooney picked up most of the slack left by those two, but I thought Grant made arguably the two biggest baskets of the game. One, when Notre Dame cut the lead to three and seemed to have all the momentum. Grant created this shot all by himself, worming his way to the basket and forcing the ball through the hoop under duress. The next was another low post basket to push the lead from five to seven with about a minute left in the game (pretty much icing it in my opinion).
Player Evaluations:
Ennis: He just was not himself this game. His assist totals are inflated because Cooney hit everything. In reality, Ennis created very little offense. This week off should help him more than anybody else.
Cooney: I was talking before the game about the possibility of this being a trap game. My opinion was, it would not be a trap game. Although looking back I think it was. Syracuse did not seem to have much in the tank as a team. However, I did mention that Notre Dame is so bad that Syracuse probably only needs one guy to get hot to secure the win. I had no idea how right I was going to be. The first question every coach needs to ask when the play Syracuse is, how are we going to stop Cooney? You saw in this game what happens when the opposing team does not go out of their way to make Cooney's life hard. That is one of the reasons why SU won't see much zone at all this year. Probably the only team that could get away with zoning Syracuse is Syracuse.
Fair: He really needed to be able to hit a few mid range jumpers in this one, but he couldn't. It was probably Fair's first bad game of the season. He's usually good for about one a year, so he was due. I'm glad he got it out of the way against Notre Dame.
Grant: He seemed to shy away from contact offensively until the very end when we needed it most. I remember seeing Warrick do the same thing his sophomore year during back to back games. My opinion is, it means Grant gets worn down and needs to get a little stronger. Despite all this, he was the unsung hero of the game. The one thing I most want to see from Grant is him using his athletic gifts to affect the game defensively, and in this game his defense was almost as key as Cooney's shooting.
Christmas: He had a battle underneath with Sherman (who is surprisingly good) and he fought hard. Christmas eventually fouled out, but I thought fouls 3 and 4 were bad calls, so I can't blame him for that. I wish his teammates got him the ball on offense more, because the few times Christmas got touches good things seemed to happen. The only person to get Christmas a good look down low was Cooney, and Christmas repaid the debt with two tremendous assists to Cooney that lead to 6 points. As Christmas improves, the rest of the team needs to improve at finding him in the right spots. If they would have in this game, I bet Christmas could have helped with some of the offensive woes.
Gbinije: Played good defense and made a three, then made a terrible turnover and came out of the game for good. When Cooney is playing like this, Gbinije is bound to sit the bench a lot, because even though he fills in for Ennis too, he's not a point guard.
Roberson: His talent is evident. Did anybody else notice him grab a rebound about three feet above the rim? The fact that he played against Duke leads me to believe that he had a good week of practice and is showing improvement. The jumper he hit looked pretty sweet, and I saw him hit a number of those in warm ups before the game. I expect him to continue to play small minutes with the chance for more as his play and game situations dictate.
Keita: Got in the game and played his usual good defense, but Christmas was a better match up for Notre Dames big, strong, plodding centers.
