Would you do the deal?
Would you do the deal for what you couldn’t do then for what you can do now?
Say you’re the Notre Dame basketball program and you spent those long winter nights of January and February in Atlantic Coast Conference play gut-punched by one close loss after another by one possession.
Close but not close enough again. And again.
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A one-point loss despite a chance to win at North Carolina State. A one-point loss at home to North Carolina despite leading by three with five seconds remaining. More misery followed in the weeks to come with early January losses. At home against Virginia Tech. On the road against Wake Forest. All wins that were there within reach. All meltdowns.
Close but not close enough again. And again.
If someone told you after those heartbreakers that you would have to suffer then to survive/surge now, even to the point of getting a gifted phantom foul call in the closing seconds of a first-round league tournament win, would you do it?
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Would you trade that heartache for the chance to grow from it and learn from it and be better because of it and win those close games as the season wound down?
Looks like Notre Dame made that deal.
“This whole season has been a learning experience for us,” said head coach Micah Shrewsberry. “Now you’re seeing that come out with who we are as a team.”
This Notre Dame team is closing close games.
Last week, winning by two points at home against a Stanford team that finished with a winning league record. Last weekend by two points at home against Cal in what many insist was an instant classic that staggered through four overtimes.
The latest, a third straight one-possession win Tuesday by one in the first game on the first day of the ACC Tournament, a place that Shrewsberry insisted his program would never again see.
When all looked lost for Notre Dame — down by four with under four minutes remaining and playing nearly the entire way as if it was moving waist-deep in mud — it found a way past Pittsburgh, 55-54, at Spectrum Center in Charlotte.
Honestly, it found a favorable call.
This one looked headed to overtime after Markus Burton’s off-balance/degree of difficult jumper didn’t drop. Small forward Tae Davis, being at the right place at the right time, offered a quick rebound put-back that didn’t fall before the horn sounded.
Ah, but so too did a whistle.
Replays clearly showed that Pittsburgh forward Zack Austin didn’t lay so much as a finger on Davis. On no pickup court in the country, be it a Sunday night church league or a midweek run in the inner city, was that a foul. Not even close.
You can’t convince anyone otherwise. Ever.
“Sometimes,” Shrewsberry said, “you need a little luck of the Irish.”
Davis stepped to the free throw line with the game tied at 54 and 0.5 seconds to play. Back in January, back in February, Davis might not make the first of those two free throws to basically win it.
“I was just trying to keep a clear mind and not even think about anything, really,” Davis said of being at the line.
It’s not January. It’s not February. It’s March. Davis made the first and missed the second (on purpose). When the horn sounded, Notre Dame was on to the second round with a first-round ACC victory for the second straight season.
For so long this season, for an Irish team now 15-17, we’ve strained to see progress. League win streaks never stretched beyond two. Losses mounted. Concern closed in. Everything at times looked so disjointed. Two steps forward, three back. One step forward, two back. When, many wondered, would we see progress.
Squint hard Tuesday and you saw it. Progress.
Tuesday marked the first time that Notre Dame has won league tournament games in consecutive seasons since 2020-21. It may not be much, but for this group, for this season, that’s something. They’re winning important games at the most important time.
Notre Dame looked most of the day as if it had left its wind and its legs and its conditioning and everything else needed to run up and down the floor for 40 minutes back on the Purcell Pavilion court Saturday. To say the Irish were running on empty would not be accurate. To do that, you have to start with a full tank.
The looks on the Irish faces, particularly that of Burton even early in the second half, was that they had no legs. They had no energy. They had nothing but found a way to push through it. They played past those 17 turnovers. They played past the ugly shooting percentage (39.6 percent from the field, 20 percent from 3). They played past stretches where possessions produced no points.
They found a way out.
Now they get a chance to figure it out again, this time Wednesday against No. 5 seed North Carolina. Payback won’t be a problem in this one. Notre Dame gave that one away in early January in South Bend. Gifted it to the Tar Heels the same way this win was gifted to the Irish.
Want to go back even further? Last time these teams met in the ACC Tournament, 85 miles up I-85 in Greensboro in 2021, North Carolina won 101-59 in a game it once led by 52 points.
Fifty-two.
None of that matters now. Not to this Notre Dame team. Not for this college basketball season. The odds of Notre Dame doing what North Carolina State did last season and winning five games in five days are still staggeringly high. Impossible, even.
But you can’t get five unless you get one.
The Irish got one.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame basketball was back in first game on first day of ACC Touranment
