Only two games into the Notre Dame 15 Years Tournament, and the lower seeds already are 2-0. In this case, the 2018-19 Irish, the lowest seed in the field showed that perhaps, they could have had a better season than the most recent iteration of the Irish. They won the first-round matchup in which players basically played against each other, 80-71.
Despite the closeness of this game, the ’18-19 Irish never trailed in the first half and had a four-point lead at the break. Early in the second half, the ’19-20 John Mooney hit a shot to give his team a one-point lead, but the younger Mooney answered back with his own bucket 12 seconds later, and the ’18-19 Irish led the rest of the way. They went on a 13-4 run to break it open and ultimately grew their lead to 13. Though the ’19-20 Irish cut the deficit to five with just over a minute left, they made too many mistakes to give themselves a shot at late heroics.
Five players scored in double figures for the ’18-19 Irish, led by Mooney’s 20 points and 13 rebounds. Dane Goodwin paced the second unit with 13 points. D.J. Harvey and T.J. Gibbs put up 12 points apiece, and Prentiss Hubb had 10 while shooting all but one of his field-goal attempts from 3-point range.
The ’19-20 Irish were paced by Mooney, who had 22 points and 16 rebounds. Hubb wasn’t far behind with 17 points. This Irish team had fewer free-throw attempts (11) than free throws made by its opponent (16), and the number of free throws this Irish team made (seven) was the difference in the game.
