While the rest of the Notre Dame community figures out whether it’s worth paying four figures for a ticket to the College Football Playoff first-round home game against Indiana, the men’s basketball team continues to figure out how to survive without Markus Burton.
Notre Dame (5-5) hosts its next-to-last nonconference game Wednesday night against Dartmouth (4-4), which plays its sixth contest of a seven-game road trip.
The Fighting Irish took a promising step — and snapped a five-game losing streak — on Saturday by edging Syracuse 69-64 in their ACC opener.
“We needed to be in a close game and we needed to win a close game so our guys can build some belief back,” head coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “We can’t take any steps back on Wednesday.”
Without Burton — the stat sheet-stuffing sophomore point guard who injured the medial collateral ligament in his knee Nov. 26 against Rutgers — the Irish are struggling to find someone to run the offense, as evidenced by their seven assists versus 15 turnovers against Syracuse.
At the same time, players are filling the scoring void. Braeden Shrewsberry poured in a career-high-tying 25 points versus the Orange while hitting 6 of 11 3-point attempts. Tae Davis averaged 12.4 points and 7.2 shots per game when Burton was healthy, but he has upped his mean production to 16.6 points and 12.2 shots in the past five games.
Micah Shrewsberry, though, prefers to measure progress on a possession-by-possession basis.
“Just the toughness,” he said. “There have been times when we haven’t gotten the key stop. We haven’t gotten the bucket when we quite need it. It gets deflating sometimes.”
Dartmouth knows that feeling. On Sunday, the Big Green took a one-point lead with 4:03 left in overtime at UIC — and then failed to score on their final six possessions to suffer a 69-68 loss.
The Big Green, who haven’t posted a winning season since 1998-99, believe whole-heartedly in launching 3-pointers as they take 48 percent of their shots from behind the arc. Senior Cade Haskins (13.6 ppg) has hit a team-high 28 of 68 3-pointers this season, though fellow senior Ryan Cornish stacks up as the team’s top scorer (14.3 ppg), passer (3.0 assists per game) and defender (2.3 steals per game).
In its only previous game against a power-conference opponent, Dartmouth upset Boston College 88-83 on Nov. 29.
–Field Level Media
