Irish drop out of Top 25 with loss to Wildcats
By KATHLEEN O'BRIEN
Associate Sports Editor
LEXINGTON, Kent.
It was a long Christmas break for the Notre Dame men's basketball team, which dropped out of the Top 25 this week after losing three of its last four games.
"We're on our last breath here," All-American Troy Murphy said Saturday after Notre Dame fell to Kentucky. "The red lights are flashing. We've got to get it together."
The latest Irish loss came at the hands of a quickly rising Kentucky Wildcats squad in an 82-71 defeat before a raucous Rupp Arena crowd of 23,018 fans.
Early in Saturday's match-up, Notre Dame (9-5) appeared undaunted by the smoke and fireworks display set off to introduce the Kentucky starters.
The Irish came close to silencing the Lexington crowd by taking a 14-4 lead over the 9-5 Wildcats. They did so behind six Ryan Humphrey rebounds, fade-away shots by All-American Troy Murphy and Mr. Consistent Matt Carroll and a bang-in bucket by Lexington native David Graves. That was the last quiet moment for the Kentucky fans.
"We got comfortable with the situation being up 14-4," Murphy said, "and it backfired on us."
The Irish began to unravel, turning the ball over six times in less than three minutes, and the Wildcats went on a 13-0 run, spreading the scoring among six players.
"Playing against a team of Notre Dame's caliber and Troy Murphy coming in," Kentucky coach Tubby Smith said, "you've got to raise your level of play and I thought we did that."
Notre Dame bounced back to edge the Wildcats by three following consecutive 3-pointers by Graves. The junior small forward, playing in his hometown against a team he revered before Kentucky snubbed him in the recruiting process, would only make one more basket the rest of the game.
Kentucky found the key to stopping the Irish stopping Troy Murphy. Stick-skinny Tayshaun Prince did just that, limiting Murphy to 14 points 10 below his season average and forcing him into four fouls while Prince scored a game-high 19 points and pulled down eight rebounds.
"Tayshaun really made Troy work to get his shots," Smith said. "Him [Murphy] getting in foul trouble really helped us."
Prince kicked off a 12-0 run for Kentucky by blocking one of Murphy's shots. The Wildcats clung to a 33-24 lead and never trailed again, pulling off their sixth straight victory and seventh straight over the Irish.
Notre Dame did its best to climb back into the contest, but couldn't follow through as a different Wildcat answered every comeback attempt.
"Every time you got the ball in the post," Humphrey said, "there were two or three guys on you. We've just got to become tougher. We've got to box out and rebound as a team."
The Irish closed to within five on a Murphy bucket in the lane with less than two minutes to play, but Carroll fouled guard Keith Bogans, who nailed both free throws. Down the stretch, Notre Dame had to foul in attempts to regain possession, and Kentucky was a perfect 10-for-10 from the charity stripe in the final 3:07.
Nine Kentucky players logged more than 16 minutes of playing time in the contest, while no one outside the starting lineup did so for Notre Dame. Putting up heavy duty minutes on the court has become routine for the Irish, as point guard Martin Ingelsby fell 19 seconds short of playing his fourth straight 40-minute game, while Graves, Carroll and Murphy were all in the game more than 35 minutes once again.
"Some of the guys coming off the bench aren't as good at the ball-handling against athletic speed and ball-pressure," Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said.
Notre Dame needs to find a way to use its bench as Kentucky delivered the knockout punch with its depth. The Irish starters average 33 minutes of playing time per game, and getting wins with only six or seven players contributing is a difficult task, especially in the physical Big East Conference.
Brey tried to give Ingelsby a bit of a breather from holding the reins by having Carroll or Graves bring the ball downcourt while Ingelsby slid to a shooting guard spot. Yet the senior captain was still in the game nearly every second of regulation, and his "substitutes" also saw little of the bench.
Aside from the depth issue, nothing seemed to go right for the Irish, who couldn't get shots to fall or balls to spin in their direction.
"That's the way it's been all year," Graves said. "It's just been one stop, one rebound, and it seems like we can't get it."
No one fix-it will cure the Irish woes, as a new problem crops up each game.
The Irish outrebounded their foes in recent losses to Kentucky, Seton Hall and Syracuse. Against Seton Hall, Murphy pulled down 20 rebounds while Humphrey added 15, with each guy easily outrebounding the top two rebounders for the Pirates combined. But dominating the boards didn't do it for the Irish.
"For us to take the next step," Brey said, "we're going to have to get the defensive rebound when it's a two-point game.
Neither did looking to Murphy. He became just the seventh Big East player to score 20 points and grab 20 rebounds in a single game against Seton Hall, yet the Irish lost by two. He scored beneath his average against Syracuse and Kentucky while the Irish came home defeated. In a home win over Rutgers, he drilled in 37 points, and it was barely enough to win.
"It's hard," Murphy said Saturday. "It's just tough."
A shooting slump hurt Notre Dame against Kentucky and Seton Hall, as the Irish shot a combined 36 percent in the two games, with Humphrey and Graves having the toughest times. But who knows if a higher percentage from the field would have helped, since the Irish hit 50 percent of their shots against the Syracuse Orangemen and still lost.
At Syracuse, Notre Dame had more trouble from the foul line, where it hit just one of 10 attempts in the first half.
On the road against the Pirates, an Ingelsby charge in the final minutes knocked the Irish out of contention, while a lack of defense has plagued the Irish other times.
A good move for Brey would be to have his best defender, Carroll, guard the most dangerous opponent to make use of his talents.
This team is more talented than its 9-5 record lets on. Back in November, as the Irish drilled a ranked Cincinnati team and shot 73 percent from 3-point land against Loyola, the Irish looked unstoppable, as if just half of their team would be good enough to top quality opponents.
Unfortunately, that's what they've been trying to do win while using just the starting lineup while occasionally tossing Harold Swanagan and Torrian Jones into the mix.
Something has to give for a squad so highly touted in the preseason it peaked at No. 10 in the polls in early December.
"We need to stop concentrating on what other teams are doing and start concentrating on what we're doing," Graves said. "We need to start worrying about playing instead of being tentative ... This team doesn't give up. We're not going to panic."
All Sports Stories for Wednesday, January 17, 2001
