Looking to build on Saturday’s 76-72 defeat of Pittsburgh in South Bend, Notre Dame men’s basketball is hitting the road for the first time in two weeks. The Irish (12-15, 6-10 ACC) will take on No. 13 Clemson (22-5, 14-2 ACC), a lock for the NCAA Tournament, on Wednesday night in South Carolina.
Notre Dame breathed some life back into its previously downtrodden home stretch, finishing what had been a dismal homestand. The Irish had lost by a combined 39 points to Louisville and SMU to start last week, extending their disappointing February record to 1-5. However, their takedown of Pitt was their first all season against a team positioned in the upper half of the ACC standings.
A big reason for Notre Dame’s success on Saturday was its mix of high-end talent and depth. Sophomore guard Markus Burton and junior Tae Davis did what Irish fans expect them to do, combining for 41 points. However, with graduate guard Matt Allocco and sophomore guard Braeden Shrewsberry both out, senior J.R. Konieczny (10 points on 6-for-6 free throw shooting) and freshman Cole Certa (12 points on three made 3-pointers) each stepped up in the backcourt.
After Saturday’s win, head coach Micah Shrewsberry spoke on the development of Certa, who has played 22 combined minutes in the last two games.
“It’s hard to make shots in inconsistent minutes. No matter who you are — like, you can [have] guys in the NBA that don’t play a whole lot — it’s hard to be a knockdown shooter in inconsistent minutes,” Shrewsberry said. “He’s now starting to sniff it and play a little bit more. He’s getting on the court a little bit more, and he’s missed some of his open 3’s, but you just knew at some point in time he’s gonna start knocking them down. That’s what he does.”
With two of his usual five starters simultaneously unavailable for the first time all season, coach Shrewsberry had to throw a number of previously untested combinations of players on the floor. But that might not have been the worst thing in the world for the Irish.
“Kind of adjusting on the fly, just based on what they [the opponents] are doing, I think is something that’s really good for us and key for us,” Shrewsberry pointed out.
He also mentioned that Notre Dame’s ability to play consistent basketball and keep pace with Pittsburgh early on helped him keep the team in sync down the stretch.
“I needed every single one of those timeouts at the end, and that’s what you save them for, mostly, if you don’t have to use them throughout the game — if you don’t have to stop a run, if you don’t have to do certain things,” Shrewsberry said. “You use them for those moments, because in my mind, I’m like, ‘This is gonna be a close game. It’s gonna come down the stretch. We’re gonna have some lineups that have never played before. We’ve gotta make sure we’re organized.’ And for those guys to kind of adjust and do it on the fly was big for them.”
It’s worth noting that Notre Dame will visit another NCAA Tournament contender, Wake Forest, three days after the Clemson game. Last year, during this same late-season week, the Irish beat both the Tigers and the Demon Deacons, who were both jockeying for seats at the March Madness table then, at Purcell Pavilion. If the Irish are to accomplish the same feat this season, coach Shrewsberry believes his team must pay off its preparation by battling when the lights turn on.
“We spend so much time walking through, we spend so much time breaking down — we do offensive reviews to make sure we’re running our sets the right way,” Shrewsberry described. “But if you don’t compete on Wednesday, nothing matters. That stuff doesn’t matter. Details don’t matter.”
“When you have the right effort, you have the right focus, you have the right energy, all the details kick in, right? We want the details to matter, so that involves us coming in and just giving our all and fighting, and I know we’re gonna prepare the right way. Now let’s go fight the right way.”
Heading into Wednesday’s game, Markus Burton needs just 17 points to reach 1,000 for his career. If he can get there by the end of the regular season, he’d become the seventh-fastest player in Notre Dame men’s basketball to reach four digits. Only Duke freshman phenom Cooper Flagg is averaging more points per game (21.8) within ACC play than Burton (21.2) this season.
Clemson primed for another deep run
Last season, the Tigers came out of nowhere to turn only their third NCAA Tournament appearance since 2011 into an Elite Eight run. Clemson had limped into the big dance, suffering a blowout loss to Boston College in its first game of the ACC Tournament, but it did not matter. As a No. 6 seed, the Tigers rode balanced and effective scoring to upsets of Baylor and Arizona before eventually succumbing to Alabama.
The 2024-25 iteration of Clemson has proven last year’s surge to be anything but a fluke. Picked fourth in the ACC Preseason Poll, the Tigers currently occupy second in the conference, only a game back of Duke. Speaking of the Duke, that’s one of two top-five teams Clemson has slayed this season. The Tigers knocked off No. 4 Kentucky on Dec. 3 and beat the second-ranked Blue Devils on Feb. 8, winning both games at home.
Altogether, Clemson has won 10 of its last 11 games, losing only to Georgia Tech in the game that preceded Duke on Feb. 8. This past Saturday, the Tigers handled business against the same SMU team that destroyed the Irish in South Bend, winning 79-69 in Dallas.
“Terrific win for our team … I thought we played with great energy and pretty good attention to detail,” 15th-year head coach Brad Brownell said after the game. “... Our ability to to shoot the ball and share the ball — obviously 24 assisted baskets is terrific. I just thought we played a very clean game and beat a very good team today.”
Many of Clemson’s assists set up 3-pointers, as the Tigers connected on 14 of their 29 shots from distance against SMU. Jaeden Zackery, an in-league transfer from Boston College, made five of them for 19 points. He had knocked down only four triples on 16 attempts in the previous month.
Chase Hunter, a sixth-year Tiger and one of two returning starters from last year’s postseason march, hit from beyond the arc three times on Saturday, posting 17 points. He leads Clemson with 17.1 points per contest and has scored as many as 30 in a single game this year.
Against SMU, Hunter drilled two triples in the second half’s opening minute, helping the Tigers stretch a 35-32 halftime lead into a 45-32 advantage with 17 minutes to play.
“I thought our defensive activity was good,” Brownell said about Clemson’s start to the second half. “We knocked a couple of balls loose, got into some transition situations where we were fairly opportunistic there. And then I just think we kept executing. We just kept getting pretty good quality shots.”
The Tigers also benefitted from getting Russian center Viktor Lakhin, a Cincinnati transfer, back in the fold after early foul trouble. He finished with 16 points and six rebounds after scoring a team-high 22 in the upset of Duke.
“Lakhin makes a difference,” Brownell said. “He’s a 6 [foot] 10 [inch] guy that can guard pick-and-roll a couple of different ways, he can make a 3, stretch the defense. Obviously him playing a lot was a big factor in the second half.”
Currently projected to claim the No. 5 seed in the Midwest Region and start the NCAA Tournament in Seattle, Clemson’s playing as well as anyone in the ACC right now. With a Duke loss against Wake Forest or North Carolina in the regular season’s final week, the Tigers could very well capture the top spot in the conference tournament.
“I think our pieces fit,” Brownell stated. “I think that’s a big part of all this is you’ve gotta have buy-in, your pieces [have] gotta fit, guys have been coachable and because we’re older, we’ve been able to withstand the length of the season and all the trials and tribulations that go with that.”
In last year’s 69-62 defeat of Clemson, the Irish held the Tigers to a dismal 5-for-28 line from 3-point land. Hunter and Ian Schieffelin, Clemson’s returning starters from that game, had very different nights, as the former totaled only 4 points while the latter double-doubled with 10 points and 14 rebounds. Burton and Davis combined for an efficient 39 points on the Notre Dame side.
For this year’s matchup, the Irish and Tigers will square at 7 p.m. on Wednesday inside Littlejohn Coliseum.
