I know Eddie isn’t Shaq like we paid him to be, but he had 13 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 blocks, 2 steals, 1 foul and 0 turnovers.
Eddie looks in better shape with his back issue than earlier in the year when he was hunchbacking up and down the court.
Some of his chest-thumping can be a bit much at times, but there's no denying when his energy is high (along with Cuff and Davis), it raises the effort of the entire team. I thought Choppa played some nice D as well at times.
Davis on Davis was also a good matchup. Jyare certainly held his own and made things difficult for Tae. Also met him shot for shot at times but picked up a few too many fouls.
Was clearly a tale of 2 halves. How we let Burton paste 22 on us in the first 16 mins was frustrating. He is very good (but not that good). Cuffe on him in the second half really shut him down. Good adjustment by Red. We really fought back.
Starling made some clutch shots getting us the lead late. I'm sure Irish fans were cursing under the breaths over that.
Free throws. Yikes. We simply need to make more of them. We got a little lucky grabbing a W today missing as many as we did. We're not going to always be so lucky if it doesn't improve.
The best takeaway from this game was effort. We played consistently with a high level effort after a sleepwalking start. Hopefully it will continue. We're not worldbeaters but when the effort is there, we're competitive (at least against the second tier of the ACC.)
Not sure what Shrewsberry was doing with those zone sets on D. Their zone was poor and let us back into the game. ND have some nice, athletic players. They certainly didn't shoot from the perimeter at the clip they are capable of. Shrewsberry was also a clown show at the end in spazzmode with the ejection and double-T. It reaked of "I just got out coached so am going to make a spectacle blaming the refs for it." Hopefully the academy was watching. What a clown. Kudos to Red for making the adjustments needed. He won the coaching battle today solidly.
Props to the fans today as well. Looks like they showed up and fed off the team's resurgence at the end of the first half. We also showed that when the kids play hard, we'll cheer for them. It was good to see and hear the dome looking like the dome again after recent games.