Irish confident heading into NCAA tournament NEW YORK As the deadeye 3-point shooter for Louisville drifted to the corner unheeded Friday night, Mike Brey frantically pointed and yelled. His Notre Dame team didn't see things his way, and sure enough, a buzzer-beating bomb dropped in. Then Brey's cup runneth over.
Like over and on to the Madison Square Garden floor. The Irish coach spun around and slammed the scorer's table, sending water and a paper cup splashing onto the court. Still irate, Brey stormed off to the locker room for halftime, tearing off his jacket and muttering to himself.
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Joyce Center, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA Notre Dame wasn't happy to be at the Big East tournament. And it wasn't happy with the result, a fourth straight semifinal exit. But a general orneriness was among the discoveries the Irish claim to have made in Manhattan, a series of mini-revelations that may help preclude another NCAA tournament flop.
"We were upset," Irish guard Jerian Grant said, standing outside the locker room after midnight Friday. "We were mad. We were really tough. That's what this team kind of needed, a little bit more toughness. That's what we found."
Reinvention has been the default setting for Notre Dame all season,
oakley gascan, but this stage is simpler and less indistinct: Only assertiveness can carry the program into its first Sweet 16 since 2003, a stretch that hits like a caustic cloud of exhaust every time the new NCAA brackets unfold.
Brey has described a need to get this player and that player aggressive before and during the Big East tournament, but it's now a mission statement for all. Jack Cooley must be a force early to collapse the defense. Grant and backcourt mate Eric Atkins must set an unflappable tone. And Pat Connaughton must seek 3-pointers like the 15 he hit in New York.
"Throughout the year, if I wasn't hitting a shot at the beginning of the game, I'd just defer to other guys, not really look for my shot anymore," Connaughton said. "Which I had to, I guess,
oakley discount, grow out of. That's something I ended up doing here."
Notre Dame has had a tendency to seize up in the moment. Still, even as Louisville ground the Irish down Friday, there was little sense of timidity or paralysis.
As Brey said, it was a scorching hot, soon-to-be-No. 1 NCAA tournament seed playing as such, and still the Irish had a chance well into the second half.
"We found something here that can help us," Brey said. "We played with a freer mind. There's a confidence coming out of here.
"For the most part here we were very poised, more poised than we were during the regular season, and we were pretty darn good during the regular season. It felt like you were coaching men, and I talked to them about that, because that's how we'll have to be if we're going to stay alive in the next one."
After his team dispatched Notre Dame from this event for the last time, Rick Pitino was waxing about Syracuse's rejuvenation, and the parallels to his Louisville team's run from the No. 7 Big East seed to the championship a year earlier.
"All of a sudden," Pitino said, "the tournament turns you around."
For once, Notre Dame can only hope he's right.
bchamilton@tribune.com
Twitter @ChiTribHamilton
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