Notre Dame shot a blistering 54.2 percent from the field and utilized a massive second-half run to catapult itself to a 90-82 win over North Carolina in the ACC Tournament championship game Saturday night in Greensboro.
Notre Dame wins ACC basketball tournament 2015: Fighting Irish take down UNC 90-82 to claim title
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish will be riding high into the NCAA Tournament after knocking off North Carolina to wear the ACC crown for the first time.
A night after dispatching potential NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed Duke, the No. 3 Fighting Irish did the same thing to the Blue Devils' chief rivals by connecting on 10-of-20 from beyond the arc and hitting all but four of their 32 free throw attempts. Senior guard Pat Connaughton was the star of stars, drilling 7-of-9 field goal attempts, 4-of-5 three-point attempts, and finishing with 20 points. Fellow starters Jerian Grant (game-high 24), Zach Auguste (16), Steve Vasturia (14) and Demetrius Jackson (11) also scored in double-figures. Grant was named the MVP of the tournament.
Marcus Paige led North Carolina with 24 points, while Brice Johnson chipped in 20 of his own. For the tournament, Johnson averaged a stellar 18.0 points per game. He joins teammate Justin Jackson, Irish stars Connaughton and Grant, and Virginia's Malcolm Brogdon on the All-Tournament team.
After trailing by five at the break, the Tar Heels had seemed to take control at the midway point of the second half, holding a 64-56 advantage with just 9:21 to play. Then, in the blink of an eye, the vaunted Notre Dame offense exploded. The Fighting Irish scored the game’s next 15 points thanks to some hot outside shooting and tremendous ball movement.
The Tar Heels also helped out during the spurt, missing a layup and turning the ball over five times as their comfortable lead morphed into an insurmountable deficit.
When the dust settled, Notre Dame had gone on a 24-2 run and taken complete control of a game that had once appeared destined to be claimed by the de facto home team. Instead, it was the first ACC championship for Mike Brey's squad, which is in just its second season in the league. The Irish lost in the opening round of the tournament a year ago.
For North Carolina, the loss kept them from completing what would have been one of the more impressive championship runs in tournament history. The Tar Heels arrived in the championship game after dispatching Boston College and then winning back-to-back contests against No. 4 seed Louisville and No. 1 seed Virginia. Roy Williams and company had been seeking the 18th ACC Tournament title in program history, an achievement that would have put them just one behind arch-rival Duke.
The task for Notre Dame now becomes proving wrong all the naysayers who are still wary of the Fighting Irish given their recent struggles in the NCAA Tournament. Brey has fielded several stellar squads over the past decade, teams whose ability to shred through the rugged Big East had seemed to indicate they’d be ready for whatever the NCAA Tournament had to throw at them. Instead, the Fighting Irish have won just two total NCAA Tournament games since 2003, which was the last time they advanced out of the tournament’s opening weekend.
All but one of Notre Dame’s six tournament losses since 2003 have come to double-digit seeds. That one outlier? A 20-point beatdown in 2008 at the hands of Washington State, who was seeded just one line above the No. 5 Fighting Irish. In that game, the powerful Notre Dame offense was held to just 41 points. Outside of that, the Irish have been bounced by No. 11 Winthrop (2007), No. 11 Old Dominion (2010), No. 10 Xavier (2012) and No. 10 Iowa State (2013). The most painful loss of all came in an embarrassing 71-57 defeat at the hands of No. 10 Florida State in 2011, when the Irish were a No. 2 seed who some thought had the potential to win it all.
Convincing the college basketball world that this Notre Dame team is different will be a pointless endeavor of Sisyphean proportions until the Fighting Irish finally get over the hump and do some serious damage in the Big Dance. This week certainly offered up plenty of reasons to believe that boulder will finally stay at the top of the hill in a couple of weeks.
A final look at the ACC Tournament bracket can be found here, via Raycom Sports.
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