One of the purposes of the Notre Dame 15 Years Tournament is to give disappointing teams a shot at redemption. That’s not to say the 2010-11 Irish were a letdown given their 27-7 record. Still, you have to wonder what would have happened if a few things had gone differently.
The Irish took care of business early on with an Old Spice Classic championship and an 11-1 nonconference record, their only loss coming against a ranked Kentucky team. Then, after splitting their first six Big East games, they went 11-1 the rest of the regular season. One of those wins came on the road against Pittsburgh, then ranked second. Though the Panthers ultimately finished one game better than Notre Dame’s 14-4 conference record to win the Big East title, Mike Brey had impressed enough voters to be named national coach of the year.
Though the Irish, then ranked fourth, lost in overtime to Louisville in the Big East semifinals, their resume still netted them a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. Playing their first set of games in Chicago should have given them some of the best crowd support in the first weekend of the tournament, and that should have helped them advance past that, but it wasn’t to be. After taking down 15th-seeded Akron in their first game, the Irish were stunned in a 14-point loss to 10th-seeded Florida State. To be fair, that year’s Final Four had no team seeded higher than third, but that was of little consolation to the Irish, who were fifth in the final ranking.
Big East Player of the Year Ben Hasbrough paced the Irish with 18.4 points and 4.3 assists a game and shot a team-high 43.5 percent from 3-point range. Tim Abromaitis made third-team all-conference after averaging 15.4 points a game. Though he didn’t net any honors, Carleton Scott was well-rounded with an 11.2 scoring averaging and team highs in rebounding (7.4) and free-throw percentage (.889).