Notre Dame men’s basketball picked up a win over the Pittsburgh Panthers on Tuesday, 55-54. Following a game against California on Mar. 8 that went into four overtimes and saw 222 total points between the two teams, the Irish came out victorious in a slugfest with the Panthers and will now turn their attention to the North Carolina Tar Heels on Wednesday.
Photo via Notre Dame Athletics
The Irish will need sophomore guard Markus Burton to be more secure with the ball in his hands against North Carolina, who scores the second most points in the ACC, with the Tar Heels averaging 81.7 points per game.
Burton averaged 2.7 turnovers per game on the season and had six against the Panthers. It was the third time this season that Burton has turned the ball over six times in a game and the ninth time this season he has had four or more. One of those nine games came against the Tar Heels on Jan. 4, a game that the Irish lost at home on a four-point play from sophomore guard Elliot Cadeau.
Tae Davis, a junior forward who led the Irish in scoring against the Panthers with 11 points on 3-10 shooting, must assert himself on the interior at a higher level than he did in the first round of the ACC Tournament. While he iced the game with a free throw with 0.5 seconds remaining on the clock, Notre Dame will need Davis to knock down more shots at the rim.
While the two leading scorers for the Irish were less than great in round one, going a combined 7-24 from the field, Notre Dame saw key performances from two seniors in Matt Allocco and Nikita Konstantynovskyi.
Allocco, a guard playing in his first power four conference tournament, knocked down three of the Irish’s four shots from deep as they finished 4-20 as a team. His nine points and five rebounds, coupled with forward Konstantynovskyi’s 10 points and nine rebounds, were pivotal in Notre Dame moving on.
Konstantynovskyi and Allocco are going to be pivotal for the Irish offense which isn’t going to get away with scoring 55 points again against the Tar Heels, who went 20-12 this past season.
North Carolina is led by the third all-time leading scorer in ACC history, fifth-year senior RJ Davis. While he has seen a dip in his scoring, Davis is still averaging 17.3 PPG on 40.5% shooting. He finished with 20 points on 7-15 from the field against Duke in the Tar Heels final game of the regular season on Mar. 8, while knocking down four threes, the second most of Davis’s season. Much like Pittsburgh’s Jaland Lowe, Davis is going to take a lot of shots, averaging 13.7 on the season.
Ian Jackson, a freshman guard from the Bronx, has been dynamite in his first season in Chapel Hill, averaging 13.3 PPG on an impressive 47.9% clip. He will be their top shooter from outside, with Jackson knocking down five threes on three separate occasions this season, most recently against Virginia Tech on Mar. 4 where he finished with 19 points on 6-10 shooting. He’s averaging 4.4 threes per game outside, and is the only player on the Tar Heel roster averaging at least two threes per game and shooting over 40% from outside, as Jackson is just over that mark at 40.9%.
Junior guard Seth Trimble is second on North Carolina in minutes per game with 29.2 and has been the glue guy on defense. He leads the team in steals per game with 1.4 and has six in his last three games. Trimble can also be pesky down low averaging 5.2 rebounds per game and has been in double digits three times this season. The Irish must emphasize keeping the Tar Heels out of the paint to ensure they only get one chance per possession.
Should they pull off an upset just 142 miles away from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Irish will take on Wake Forest on Thursday. The game against the Tar Heels will tip off at 2:30 p.m. and will be broadcast ESPN from Charlotte, North Carolina.
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