Notre Dame's swap of Mike Brey for Matt Doherty as the men's basketball coach traded steadiness for pizzazz. It looks like the team is following suit, going for consistency and balance instead of star power through its first three games.

Last year, the Irish (3-0) soared up and down along with their coach's emotional swings. All-American forward Troy Murphy was the one mainstay, but the rest of the lineup, while solid, was too inexperienced to bring its best game every night.

The biggest shift in the offseason, besides hiring the calmer Brey as head coach, has been the supporting cast turning into veterans.

"We're a year wiser and a year better," junior guard/small forward David Graves said after Saturday's 69-51 win over Cincinnati. "Everyone's really bought into what Coach Brey brought to the table. We've had input, too, and all the pressure situations we were in last year have paid off."

Murphy, a 6-foot-11 player on every preseason All-American list in the nation, is still impressive. Through Wednesday, he ranked second in the nation in scoring with 28.0 points per game, with the leader being Okechi Egbe, who plays for Tennessee-Martin, not exactly a top 25 team.

The Irish still look to Murphy first for scoring, as evidenced by his 30 points against the Bearcats, but he has help this year.

The Irish know what to expect in big games this year, and that includes an expectation of victory. When the second half began to wear on Saturday and Cincinnati was still clinging to Notre Dame's jerseys, the Irish shook them off by turning up the heat on defense, allowing the Bearcats just one offensive rebound in the second stanza. The Irish also made their shots from the field and the free throw line to lock up the win.

"We just buckled down defensively," Graves said. "We really concentrated on defensive boards, and then we hit our shots. É It's really backbreaking when somebody can hit their foul shots."

Graves, sophomore guard Matt Carroll and transfer power forward Ryan Humphrey all average better than 14 points per game. Of course, it's easy to score when your team has scored more than 100 points twice and boasts the sixth-largest scoring margin in the nation.

All five starters, including senior point guard Martin Ingelsby, have demonstrated their sweet touches behind the arc. No. 11 Notre Dame leads the country in 3-point shooting at 54.2 percent, thanks in large part to a school-record performance against Loyola Nov. 22.

"We have a lot of shooters on the team," Carroll said. "We usually have five guys on the court who can all shoot 3s."

Ingelsby, who lost his starting position last year to the flamboyant but unpredictable Jimmy Dillon, had his talents questioned in the preseason, but so far, there's no reason for concern. Ingelsby is near the nation's top in assists with an average of more than eight per game, and near the bottom in turnovers with just three in three games. His efficiency handling the ball translates into an assist to turnover ratio of 8.3, second-best in Division I. To think about how good that mark is, Dillon ranked third in the conference last year with a 1.96 ratio.

"We proved ourselves in one game," Carroll said. "We've still got a lot more games to prove ourselves in."

The bench is one unproven entity for the Irish.

Super sub Harold Swanagan got bumped from the starting lineup with the addition of Humphrey, but can ably fill in at the forward or center position. Besides Swanagan, however, none of the reserves have gotten significant playing time in the first few games.

Notes

Murphy was named Big East Co-Player of the Week along with Syracuse forward Preston Shumpert.

Murphy averaged 26.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5.0 blocked shots in Notre Dame's two victories last week. It was Murphy's first such honor of the season and seventh in his career.

• All-out effort earns recognition
  
• Irish find consistency, balance under Brey
  
• Pac-10 threats are empty