Irish Shift Focus to UNC
Somehow, in a 34-point beatdown, Mike Brey found a silver lining.
“That counted as one loss? That counted as one league loss? OK, I can live with that,” Brey told reporters after his Notre Dame squad lost 94-60 Saturday afternoon at No. 7 Duke. “Wow, they were great. They were fabulous. When they’re shooting like that around the big guy, I don’t know what to do.”
The ‘big guy’ was Vernon Carey Jr., son of the former NFL star of the same name, who pummeled the Irish inside to lead the Blue Devils with 21 points.
Duke outscored the Irish 52-32 on the interior and forced the normally ball-savvy Notre Dame offense into 14 turnovers --- nearly five above the season average.
As much as was possible, Brey emptied his bench inside the game’s final 10 minutes and urged his team to flip the page to Monday night --- when the Irish will try to salvage a split in this grueling four-game stretch that included road tilts at Clemson, Virginia and Duke in a seven-day span.
“They really guarded us,” Brey said. “We had a hard time getting any look because of their ball pressure. For us, the whole last 10 minutes in timeouts I was talking about Monday night. Because we’ve got to turn around mentally here and get ready to play against North Carolina on Monday and see if we can get out of this stretch that started at Clemson at 2-2.
“If we can do that, I’ll take that. That’s probably as good as it gets. But they were rolling! When they shoot it like that from different spots around the big fella, what do you do? They get to 90 like so easy.”
The Blue Devils scorched Notre Dame’s defense for 54 second-half points and hit 10 3-pointers in the game. They shot 56.5 percent from the field, led for almost 37 minutes and never led by fewer than nine points across the second half.
Duke had four players in double figures, as guard Tre Jones added 19 while Alex O’Connell and Matthew Hurt each contributed a dozen.
Notre Dame got a combined 40 points from Juwan Durham and John Mooney but saw its other three starters tally just six total points.
Brey pointed to Jones as the table-setter for Duke.
“First of all, he is such a winner and you look at all the plays he’s made in two years to win games for them,” Brey said. “I have the utmost respect for him. He’s just an assassin and a winner and it all starts with him. He just sets the tone for them. He’s a guy who makes everybody else confident on that team because he’s just such a killer.
“Those are the two guys (Carey and Jones) you start talking about at first but other guys really made big shots for them tonight. Everybody felt good about their jump-shot tonight.”
DURHAM’S DAY
Perhaps the biggest bright spot in an otherwise wholly dreary day for Notre Dame was the play of veteran post Juwan Durham. The 6-foot-10 transfer from Connecticut shined with a career-best 21 points, five above the mark of 16 he most recently produced last month at Florida State, and hit 9-for-3 from the floor and each of his three free throws.
Though a senior in classification, Durham has indicated he will return for the 2020-21 season, Brey has said.
NO DOUBLE VISION
Mooney had been Mr. Automatic when it came to his ability to generate double-double performances this season for the Irish.
In fact, Mooney is the nation’s leader in double-double performances since the start of the 2018-19 season. But the Irish senior wound up just short against the Blue Devils.
Mooney finished with 19 points and nine boards, scoring about four points more than his season average but corralling four boards below his standard.
He will seek the 21st double-double of his season Monday night when the Irish host North Carolina (7 p.m., ESPN).