This week, the Notre Dame men’s basketball team will play its final two games of the regular season at Purcell Pavilion. The Irish will host two of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s newest members, Stanford and Cal, on Wednesday and Saturday, respectively.
At 12-17 overall and 6-12 within ACC play, Notre Dame went 0-2 during last week’s road trip to Clemson and Wake Forest. In Saturday’s loss to the Demon Deacons, the Irish led for about 30 of the game’s 40 minutes but ended up falling by a 74-71 score. They missed three opportunties to tie the game on 3-point shots within the final 12 seconds.
Sophomore guard Markus Burton yet again led the Irish in scoring, dropping 29 points. He’s now up to 21.1 points and 3.1 assists per game, continuing to duel with Duke freshman phenom Cooper Flagg for the ACC lead in scoring average within conference games only.
Stanford seeking fourth straight win
Four tiers have emerged within the ACC season. There are the teams bound for the NCAA Tournament: Duke, Louisville and Clemson. The second tier includes the five teams that will miss the big dance but finish above .500 in ACC play. The third tier is a jumbled mess of squads with losing ACC records, and then there’s Miami.
Stanford sits at the bottom of that second tier, having gone 19-10 overall and 11-7 in ACC play thus far. Though a poor start to February tanked their March Madness hopes, the Cardinal have responded with three consecutive wins, including a 73-68 Saturday defeat of bubble team SMU in Palo Alto.
As usual, French forward and double-double machine Maxime Raynaud led the way in that game, totaling a game-high 26 points. He averages more than 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. The Cardinal were also 11 of 24 from deep against SMU, with sixth man Benny Gealer providing 17 points on five made 3-pointers off the bench.
Wins hard to come by lately for Cal
Given the state of the Golden Bears, the Irish should have a good chance to end their regular season on a high note come Saturday. Cal has lost seven of its last nine games, beating only basement-dwellers NC State on Feb. 5 and Boston College this past Saturday. As a result, they enter this week at 13-16 (6-12 ACC) and will pay a visit to No. 14 Louisville on Wednesday before heading north to South Bend.
In Saturday’s 82-71 takedown of the Eagles in Berkeley, the Golden Bears received only five bench points but got balanced contributions from its starters. Though leading scorers Andrej Stojakovic, a Stanford transfer, and freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson scored slightly below their averages, Mady Sissoko and Jovan Blacksher Jr. combined to outpace their season averages by 21 points. Sissoko, a Michigan State transfer, exploded for a double-double with 21 points and 15 rebounds, while Blacksher, a sixth-year player from Grand Canyon, tallied 18 points.
Notre Dame will host Stanford at 9 p.m. on Wednesday before battling Cal at 4 p.m. on Saturday inside Purcell Pavilion.
