Typically, nobody expects much of a team that gets out of the First Four in the NCAA Tournament. UCLA made the Final Four last year, but that was an outlier. Notre Dame hopes to take one step closer to becoming another example of that when it plays Texas Tech in San Diego in hopes of advancing to the Sweet 16. It will be a battle of programs with very little history together as the Irish won, 88-63, in their only previous meeting in 1975.
The discussion surrounding the Irish right now begins and ends with Cormac Ryan. He has started the past 11 games and averaged 13.8 points a game during that time. His 29 points against Alabama are the most for an Irish player in an NCAA Tournament game since Mike Brey became coach. Between that game and the First Four win over Rutgers, he has 45 points in the tournament, which is the most a Notre Dame player has scored in the first two games of an NCAA Tournament since David Rivers scored 51 in 1987.
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