ACC College Basketball: Notre Dame Fighting Irish VS Syracuse Orange

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish need a good win. After a bad loss to the Boston College Eagles, and close loss at the hands of the Indiana Hoosiers — Notre Dame starts up the bulk of its ACC play on Saturday afternoon against the Syracuse Orange.

The Irish are already 0-2 in conference play, and will really have to put it together on the road against longtime nemesis, Jim Boeheim and company.

Syracuse hasn’t had the best season so far, and is just 4-4 in its last eight games. They are lead by their front court tandem of Elijah Hughes and Bourama Sidibe. While the Orange is shooting a little better than Notre Dame this year, they are averaging a few points less a game — this ain’t the Syracuse team of Big East legend (and hasn’t been for some time).

Mark Konezny-USA TODAY Sports

The Irish will have to lean on John Mooney (per always) but will need a strong game from Juwan Durham as well. On the road, you already know that the Irish may launch a fair share of 3’s from Dane Goodwin, T.J. Gibbs, and Prentiss Hubb, but the key will be how they take those shots. They’ll need some classic Mike Brey ball movement, and hopefully will curb the quick “ill-advised” shots that have become more regular than we would like.

The Irish absolutely need to steal one here at Syracuse if they want to have any real shot at decent ACC season.

WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WATCH

WHERE: Syracuse, Carrier Dome
WHEN: 4:00
HOW TO WATCH: ESPN2

GAME THREAD

The game thread is open below. I know many of us are on Twitter for most of the game, but I encourage you to vent and do other things that require more than 280 characters here.