Doherty brings pride back to Notre Dame basketball
By BRIAN KESSLER
Assistant Sports Editor
First-year head coach Matt Doherty arrived in South Bend last year with the hope of putting Notre Dame basketball back on the map.
In only one season, Doherty and his Irish squad did just that.
Led by first-team All-American Troy Murphy and a solid group of role players, the overachieving Irish stunned ranked opponents and brought respect back to the Notre Dame basketball program.
"I have expectations of winning every game and winning the national championship, and that may sound ridiculous, but those are my expectations," Doherty said following the season. "Then you realize you're not in a perfect world. Did this team live up to my expectations? They surpassed them. They worked their tails off. They trusted me and believed in me and my staff from day one, and they responded whenever we challenged them and came up with some huge wins."
The Irish posted a 22-15 record and finished as the runner-up to Wake Forest in the postseason National Inivitational Tournament (NIT).
"I couldn't have imagined this season in my wildest dreams," Murphy said.
Not too many people could have. Notre Dame stunned No. 4 Ohio State 59-57 in the season opener on a buzzer beater by David Graves and built on that emotional victory.
But after that 3-0 start, the Irish lost six of seven and had fans believing it was just the same old Irish. Notre Dame advanced to the Final Four of the preseason NIT, but suffered back-to-back losses to ranked opponents Arizona and Maryland.
"It hurts. You can't go undefeated for your coaching career, but it hurts," Doherty said following Notre Dame's 76-60 loss to Arizona. "I want our guys to hurt a little bit, because I don't want them to accept this."
The Irish dropped their third straight game to a ranked opponent when they traveled to Bloomington, Ind. Bobby Knight's Hoosiers scored the first 17 points of the game and the first 15 points of overtime to defeat the Irish, 81-64. Losses to Vanderbilt and Miami (Ohio) added salt to Notre Dame's wounds, but the Irish got into a groove in late December and rattled off seven straight victories, including a 75-70 shocker over defending national champion Connecticut in Hartford.
During the second half of the season, it seemed the Irish beat the teams they weren't supposed to be able to compete with and lost to the teams they were supposed to defeat. Wins over St. John's and Seton Hall and completing the season sweep of UConn boosted Notre Dame's stock for an at-large NCAA tournament berth, but devastating defeats at the hands of conference basement dwellers Pittsburgh and Providence as well as lopsided losses to Rutgers and Villanova proved to be fatal to Notre Dame's NCAA tournament hopes.
The Irish came close to knocking off the Syracuse Orangemen and Miami Hurricanes, but they fell short in their attempt to pick up the one more quality win that could earn them a berth. The Irish finished off the regular season with 77-54 win over the Georgetown Hoyas to post a school best 8-8 conference mark.
The Irish built confidence when they avenged a regular season loss to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights in the first round of the Big East tournament. The win marked the school's first-ever conference tournament victory in five tries.
"It was a good motivator that we got Rutgers as a draw," senior point guard Dillon said. "There was a sense of payback and our team was up for it."
Miami, however, once again played the spoiler, as the Hurricanes held on to defeat the Irish for the third time this season and ousted Notre Dame from the tourney.
The Irish eagerly anticipated the school's first NCAA tournament berth since 1990, but selection Sunday didn't go as Notre Dame hoped. Doherty's squad had to settle for a NIT bid.
Notre Dame used the NCAA tourney snub as a motivator.
"We want to prove the Committee wrong by not letting us into the NCAA tournament," sophomore center Harold Swanagan said. "We're out to prove something. That's our mindset every game. We're going to go out there and play our hardest and show everybody that we could have played in the Tournament. They made a mistake."
The Irish pulled out hard-fought victories over Michigan, Xavier and BYU to advance to the Final Four.
Notre Dame routed Penn State in the semifinals, but saw its Cinderella season come to a disappointing end with a 71-61 loss to Wake Forest in the title game.
"The thing about this team is that we never quit," Graves said after the game. "We were down 16, 18 and we came back and brought it to five. A couple shots here and there it's a different ball game but, that's the way it goes. We are happy about this year."
Murphy was the only player in the country to finish in the top 10 in both scoring and rebounding. He was honored as the Big East Player of the Year and named a first-team All-American. Following the season, the sensational sophomore announced that he will return for his junior year.
Dillon set a school record for assists and Graves broke the school's mark for 3 pointers made in a season.
Whether it was Dillon's two-handed slam over Erick Barkley, Ivan Kartelo's block of Albert Mouring or David Graves' buzzer beater against Ohio State, this year's Irish squad will be remembered for many things. But most of all, they will go down as the team that put Irish basketball back on the map.
"I told them, I said they'll have a special place in my heart," Doherty said. "You don't ever want to say one team's going to be more special than another. It's like saying one child's more special than another and that's not fair. But it's going to be tough for some team to steal my heart like this team did."
All Sports Stories for Friday, May 19, 2000
