Notre Dame Basketball: Statistical Recap of Duke

The No.20 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (17-6, 6-4 ACC) dropped its third straight game on Monday night as they fell to Duke (16-5, 5-4 ACC) 84-74 at Purcell Pavilion. A poor first half ultimately doomed the Irish as they went into the break down by 12. Notre Dame’s 25 first half points was its lowest first half total all season. It was also the second time in three games that the Irish couldn’t break the 30-point mark in the first half. So let’s get down to the numbers, shall we?

As you can see it was not a pretty first half for the Irish, and the slow start pretty much doomed the Irish. I unofficially had the Irish at 0.80 points per possession (PPP), which is pretty terrible. Duke on the other hand had 1.15 PPP. The Irish only had seven field goals, — compared to Duke who had 15 field goals in the first half. We’ve seen much better performances from the Irish this season, but Monday’s effort was pretty similar to what we’ve seen the past two games against Virginia and Georgia Tech.

Notre Dame got virtually zero out of its two big guns — Steve Vasturia and V.J. Beachem. Duke on the other hand got production from Luke Kennard and Grayson Allen, as they combined for 18 points on 7/14 shooting.

Notre Dame just did not make shots in the first half, but hats off to Duke because they didn’t really surrender too many easy ones.

The Irish were much better in the second half as they averaged an unofficial 1.50 PPP. The problem was that they didn’t really have any answers for the Blue Devils on the defensive end. Duke had easy looks all night long. Jayson Tatum was as advertised. He did a little bit of everything en route to a 19 point and 14 rebound performance.

Notre Dame got absolutely nothing out of Steve Vasturia. He’s been really cold the last three games — all three have been ND losses. In his last three contests the senior guard is averaging just 8.6 PPG and shooting just 23% from the field and 21% from three-point land. What’s even more concerning is that Vasturia is 2-16 in the last two games. Vasturia has a track record of being a great shooter, so undoubtedly this is a slump for him — a really bad one at that.

V.J. Beachem had a decent stat line with 20 points on 7/14, but he was such a liability on the defensive end. No matter who he was matched up with, he got beat all night long. It seems as if his breakout performance against Syracuse was a little bit of an aberration.

My MVP of the game was T.J. Gibbs. The freshman was aggressive all night long. He poured in 12 points in the second half, and played pretty good defense on Kennard and Allen. Gibbs needs to see more minutes from here on out.

Another stat that jumps out is the rebounding differential in the second half. The Blue Devils were +11 in the rebounding department in the second half. The size advantage Duke had with Tatum, Jefferson and Giles really showed.

Lastly, the other stat that jumps off the screen is the free throw shooting by both teams. Notre Dame had 12 FT attempts in the first half, while Duke has just three. The second half was a different story as Notre Dame had 16 attempts and Duke had 21. For being the home team, you’d think Notre Dame would get a friendly whistle. Nevertheless, Notre Dame still had 28 total FT attempts and only cashed in on 19 of them (67%). Notre Dame hasn’t been itself from the free throw line during this losing streak. They’re shooting just around 64% from the line over the last three games, and have lost their spot as the nation’s best free throw shooting team.

The Irish have four days to make some adjustments before they travel to Chapel Hill on Saturday to take on North Carolina. With the way the Irish are playing right now a win at UNC may be a bit of of long shot, but it sure would be nice to steal a W against the Heels.