Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
Quite a few names lead in free throws.
College basketball season is back, and fans couldn’t be more excited. What that initially means is high statistics across the board. Even if you know these numbers won’t hold up, they still are thrilling to look at. Here are the players who posses those numbers:
Here’s the best the ACC had to offer this year.
Miami made it to the Final Four but will not be playing for the national championship. Therefore, the 2022-23 ACC men’s basketball season is over. It was another down year for the conference as it didn’t have many NCAA Tournament berths once again, and only the Hurricanes made it to the second weekend. Duke and Pittsburgh made it to the second round, and Virginia and NC State were bounced without a win.
With the conference in a slump, it’s fair to wonder when and if it will become must-watch basketball once again. Right now, it’s a power conference in name only. Could NIL and the transfer portal make this step back a permanent one? Hopefully not, but those very things have made college basketball more unpredictable than ever.
All of the above questions will be answered as time goes on. In the meantime, here are the leaders from the major statistical categories this season:
So close to a bright spot in an awful season, but at least it’s all over.
Notre Dame fans were just waiting to be put out of their misery for this season. However, none of them could have anticipated an ACC Tournament first-round game with Virginia Tech that came down to the very end.
But like so many other times this season, the Irish just could not close the deal. A frustrating 2022-23 campaign came to an end with a 67-64 loss that gave the Hokies a second-round date with NC State.
The Irish (11-21), who finished the season tied for the most losses in program history, turned a 12-point first-half deficit into a five-point lead with 5:35 remaining. They were up four with 2:08 left, but the Hokies (19-13) scored five unanswered points to retake the lead going into the final minute.
With 42.5 seconds left, [autotag]Trey Wertz[/autotag] made two free throws to put the Irish back up, but Sean Pedulla also was awarded two free throws after [autotag]Matt Zona[/autotag] fouled out on a dead ball technical. Pedulla made only one of them, so the game was tied at 64 with the Hokies getting the ball.
Justyn Mutts blew past [autotag]Dane Goodwin[/autotag] and around a screen for a dunk to put the Hokies in front, the game’s 16th lead change. [autotag]Cormac Ryan[/autotag] tried to answer with a layup but was blocked by Rodney Rice. [autotag]Nate Laszewski[/autotag] was forced to foul Pedulla, who had two free throws to try and ice the game for the Hokies. Pedulla only made one, and the Irish had a chance to tie it with a 3 with 9.8 seconds remaining.
[autotag]Marcus Hammond[/autotag] had the first 3 attempt but was blocked by Mutts, who touched the ball as it went out of bounds. That gave the Irish one last gasp to send the game to overtime with 2.4 seconds on the clock. This time, Laszewski got the ball, and he got the shot off. It didn’t fall, and [autotag]Mike Brey[/autotag]’s tenure as Irish coach was over.
Grant Basile led the Hokies with 20 points, but Mutts was their best player with a double-double of 18 points and 13 rebounds. Pedulla scored 13, and Hunter Cattoor, the ACC’s co-leader in 3-point shooting, got nine of his 11 points from beyond the arc.
Hammond lead all scorers with a season-high 23 points, and Ryan scored 18. Zona had nine points on a career-high three 3s before fouling out.
[mm-video type=playlist id=01eqbz1mmy7gev0xbr player_id=01eqbvp13nn1gy6hd4 image=]
Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.
Follow Geoffrey on Twitter: @gfclark89
No one for Notre Dame is on this list.
The ACC Tournament takes place this week, so all eyes will be on Greensboro, North Carolina. Whatever the standing of your team, this is the perfect opportunity to see the best of what the conference has had to offer this season. Here are the players you particularly will want to see:
No Notre Dame players on the list.
Only one week remains until the ACC Tournament. Now is the time for teams to build confidence and momentum going into the most important week of the season. If a team has one of these players, it most likely is in good shape:
No Notre Dame players on the list.
With less than three weeks until Selection Sunday, the time for ACC teams to make a move is now. The opportunities to make an impact are getting fewer, and if a team hasn’t done that yet, it might already be too late. Nonetheless, here are the players most likely to help their teams make a last-minute impression on the selection committee:
The Irish can’t fight fire with fire.
SOUTH BEND – We’re not going to pretend it’s been a great season for Notre Dame, but you have to credit some players for trying to make it one. [autotag]Nate Laszewski[/autotag] has been that player this year as the Irish’s leading scorer. He displayed that in full force against Virginia Tech with a career-high 33 points. But it couldn’t keep the Irish from losing, 93-87, and giving the Hokies their first ACC road win.
While the Irish (10-15, 2-12) never really allowed the Hokies (150, 5-9) to pull away, they didn’t put themselves in the best position either. They failed to make enough shots, and they weren’t very effective on defense. There were a couple of stretches in which the Hokies couldn’t miss, and that could be attributed to a variety of reasons, particularly the second-half surge of Grant Basile, who scored 28 of his own 33 points in that frame. Whatever the case, the result was the same as it’s been all season: The Irish didn’t get the stops they needed to, and having to play catch-up once again had to be frustrating.
Basile’s big scoring afternoon came on 13-of-19 shooting from the field. Justyn Mutts was the Hokies’ next-best player on the day with 19 points and nine assists. Sean Pedulla and MJ Collins scored 12 apiece. To the Irish’s credit, they did limit Hunter Cattoor, the ACC’s leading 3-point shooter, to two baskets from downtown.
[autotag]Cormac Ryan[/autotag] scored 17 points in the losing effort, and [autotag]Ven-Allen Lubin[/autotag], making his second straight start, added 11.
Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.
Follow Geoffrey on Twitter: @gfclark89
[mm-video type=playlist id=01eqbz1mmy7gev0xbr player_id=01eqbvp13nn1gy6hd4 image=]
No Notre Dame players on this list.
The ACC continues to march forward with its season. It’s getting late for some teams to make a move, and others will be just fine when the time comes to unveil the NCAA Tournament bracket. Here are some players who could help sway the selection committee for their team, especially if they’re on the bubble:
One Notre Dame player cracks the list.
We are prepared to leave January behind and enter February, the final full month of college basketball’s regular season. This is when we’ll really get to see whether the teams that have made noise to this point are legitimate or whether any struggling teams are just lying in the weeds. In the meantime, here are some of the players most making noise, specifically those in the ACC:
Notre Dame struggled in the second half the last time it played No. 20 Virginia Tech.
Notre Dame struggled in the second half the last time it played No. 20 Virginia Tech. That cost the Irish in what otherwise might have been a closer game. These teams met again Wednesday at Purcell Pavilion. Things didn’t go any better this time in a 62-51 Irish loss, extending their drought against Top 25 teams dating back to beating No. 6 Wichita State in the 2017 Maui Invitational.
The shooting issues that plagued Notre Dame last time continued in the first half of this game as it made only two field goals in the first nine-and-a-half minutes. With 5:10 remaining before halftime, the Hokies went up, 25-10, and that proved to be too much of a hole for the Irish to dig themselves out of. They did a better job of matching the Hokies in the second half, only being outscored by two points. But the deficit was in double digits practically the whole time, so any notion of entertaining a real comeback merely was a pipe dream.
The Hokies’ Nahiem Alleyne and Justyn Mutts had identical shooting lines of 7-of-14 from the field, scoring 15 and 14 points, respectively. Mutts grabbed 11 rebounds to achieve a double-double, a feat he shared with Keve Aluma (14 points, 12 rebounds). Off the bench, Hunter Cattoor scored 12 of his 13 points on four 3-pointers. He also had a game-high three steals.
Prentiss Hubb practically did all of the offensive work for the Irish, leading all scorers with 22 points on 8-of-20 shooting. No other Notre Dame player reached double figures. Dane Goodwin (eight points) and Trey Wertz (seven) both shot 0 of 4 from 3-point range on a night the Irish were 3 of 18 there. And whether or not Cormac Ryan’s absence had anything to do with this, the Irish didn’t help their cause with an 8-to-12 assist-to-turnover ratio.
