No Quarter: Irish Rip Detroit Mercy
Not a stride, not a leap, not a jump. But this, this was a step in the right direction.
Without wobble.
Tuesday night against visiting Detroit Mercy, Notre Dame started hot, matched a 33-year-old program record with 33 assists and set a season-high for scoring with a 110-71 shellacking of its guests inside Purcell Pavilion, the assists a record inside the venue.
The Irish (7-3, 0-2 ACC) also matched a program record with 20 3-pointers.
“Well you watch film and see them miss a lot of open shots and you just hope you’re not the team they start making shots against,” said Titans’ coach Mike Davis, who guided Indiana to the championship game of the 2002 NCAA Tournament. “We are the team.
“As a coach, once you saw it going in like that, you knew it was going to be a long, long night.”
Added Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, “When you get 33 assists, I don’t care who you’re playing, that’s pretty powerful. I told them at halftime, they had 17, I told them what the record was, and I said let’s try and get it.”
Prentiss Hubb led a balanced Irish brigade with a rather difficult double-double --- 11 assists to go along with 13 points, the former a career-best in helpers. John Mooney nearly had a double-double at the break, with eight points and seven boards as Notre Dame led 14-7 five minutes into the game, boosted that lead to double figures, 24-14, less than five minutes later and eventually led by as many as 16, including 49-33 at the break.
Mooney finished with his fourth-straight double-double, seventh in eight games and 28th of his career with 15 points, 11 boards.
“When you’re in the funk, and over 20 years I’ve been in and out of the funk a lot, it’s probably one-third teaching, one-third challenging manhood and one-third giving confidence,” Brey said of getting his team to respond. “Sunday was probably a little more of a challenge; Monday was a little more of (saying), ‘Let’s go! We’ve gotta go play. Don’t turn shots down.’ I think that’s the balance-point at any time, especially when they have their butts kicked last week like we did.”
On the heels of his season-best 22-point effort that almost rallied the Irish past Boston College last Saturday, T.J. Gibbs had six early points on back-to-back 3-pointers and also doled out a half-dozen assists in the opening frame. Gibbs finished with 18 points on a six-pack of triples. Juwan Durham added 16 points, nine boards and swatted five shots.
Off the bench, Dane Goodwin erupted for 16 first-half points --- just three shy of his career-best mark --- in a mere 14 minutes and closed with a career-best 27 points in 28 minutes.
“It was good to see a couple go down, especially after the last two games struggling a little bit,” Goodwin said. “It starts with teammates, I had some great looks all night long.
“We were just moving it tonight, I think guys were more aggressive taking their shots, Juwan and Mooney were posting up, being big guys.”
Antoine Davis, an NBA prospect with scouts on hand to see his game in person, tried mightily to keep the Titans in the game. The lithe guard from Birmingham, Alabama, had 14 points at the break and 23 of his team’s first 50 points.
Brad Calipari, son of Kentucky coach John Calipari, in attendance and in a suite with Irish legend Digger Phelps, had 12 points off the bench for Detroit.
Up next is the continuation of Notre Dame’s cross-country rival with storied power UCLA, which is under the guidance of first-year coach Mick Cronin.
Brey said he started to intone the series’ history to his players but was stopped short by Gibbs. The Bruins toppled Notre Dame, 65-62, last season on a last-second 3-pointer by Kris Wilkes.
“T.J. Gibbs comes to me and says, ‘The hell with that. We owe these guys.’”
