Seeing as how there is absolutely no way to put a positive spin on a game that was in all likelihood more devastating to the fans than to the players, your ambiguity is warranted.
It would be overstating the importance of this game to try and imbue it with any more meaning than that which is readily evident: We got whipped by an offensive powerhouse who had slumbered its way into a potentially season-ending losing streak. The great irony is that we bookended the Irish’s streak by both starting it and ending it. Any game dripping with that much poetic justice almost has no alternative but to go the way it did.
If Notre Dame hadn’t been playing such astoundingly bad basketball for the past three weeks I would have spent more time listening to the knot in my stomach that was speaking the truth: Notre Dame is WAY not this bad. They played us to the hilt in The Hall, they have one of the best perimeter shooting teams in the country and until recently they were unstoppable in South Bend. None of those things had changed just because they folded in their last 7 games. It’s not like they were injured, or suspended, or drunk. They were the same team who almost beat us, just with 7 more losses.
Of course the worst part is that WE know how good they can be, but people watching that game who may not be following those teams very closely will just assume that the Cards got dominated by a crappy Irish team. When in fact we got dominated by a better than average Irish team much the same way Wake recently got dominated by a mediocre Miami team. Either way, it sucks to go down like that.
On the plus side, Notre Dame can now play its way back into the tourney, bolstering the number of Big East teams in the dance which was starting to sag. On top of that UConn’s loss of Dyson means the best team in the Big East may not be quite as good as it was when we played them, so a BE title for us isn’t completely unrealistic.
Also on the plus side – it is almost physically impossible for us to play worse offense then we have for the last 3 games. We are bound to improve once we stop slinging up ill-advised threes and start working on penetrating the lane more consistently.
At least we can come home to DePaul, hopefully right the ship and get a head of steam going for the last leg of the regular season. Because one thing is for sure, if we play with the lack of intensity we showed last night, we may not win another Big East game.

My thoughts from the Joyce Center:

-Place is tiny, thought it would be a lot bigger, very cool venue though. Was def a hard place to play, got very loud. When Jerry airballed in the second half I have NEVER heard one place yell “airball” like that. That was my low point.

-Their starting lineups might have been cooler than ours. They shut the lights, play a cool video, and play Nas “Hate Me Now” only when announcing the players. I am pretty sure Nas went to ND so its cool to get alumni involved.

-Their fans were kinda dumb. I heard more complaints about the refs than any other gym I have ever been to. Mcgee and Preston play physical defense, but its the Big East, there will be contact without a whistle. Sat behind 4 army generals that were honored at half time so that was kind of neat. More on their fans to come.

-I would not have had sex with a single female in the Joyce Center. This may not be the right forum to express this but I have never seen a group of such ugly people in my life. Charlie Weiss was there too and he certainly didnt help the per capita attractiveness.

-I know I am too hard on Earl but I am getting fed up. He travels every time he touches the ball (waiting for one ref to have it out for him and call it every time) and his shot is nothing like he thinks it is.

-They dont serve beer, really could have used 1 or 13 last night. Did serve ice cream, had 2 scoops.

-I left with 7 minutes left and was grabbed by an older gentleman, approx age 70. He asked why I was leaving in a sarcastic tone and I just smiled. He wouldnt let go of my arm and said we should just put the white boys in now and I got enraged. I do have a slight temper so I decided to unload on this guy. I asked if we had played earlier this year and he said yea that went to to OT, this one isnt. I said You are 4-7 in the Big East, shut the f*** up and ended with an NIT rant. And that was the new low point.

always the class act…hahaha

that I have had to turn off the TV and walk out of the room several times during the game.

I don’t see 100% max effort every game out by several players. They should be more humiliated by the fact that they didn’t give max effort during these games (UConn and ND) than the fact that they lost. UL looks lethargic way too often.

ND sat back in a half court defense and forced us to shoot. By doing so they didn’t wear themselves out with a press (due to the short bench like last game) and they force us into a half-court offense in which we don’t have the guards or facilitators to score.

They were also able to break the press by having someone at the top of the key to pass to and then flipped out the ball to someone on the three-point line who was open due to our defense trying to recover, which they didn’t. UConn did the same thing but with faster guards.

We’ve got Mr. Basketballs that averaged over 25 points a game. We’ve got McDonald’s All Americans. We’ve got the most inaccurate shooter’s I have witnessed in a long time. Missed layups, missed dunks, missed dinks, missed jumpers. My god, it is really awful to watch.

Did they all just play against really average competitionoin high school.? Is our recruiting really that deficient that we only recruit bad shooters? Why is CRP always saying we don’t have any shooters and the he is recruiting them next year.?

The other teams defense definitely has something to do with it. But we seem to miss wide open shots at the end of a perfectly run offensive set.

If we don’t start making shots I’m gonna have to think it’s devine intervention.

…If I’d have told you four months ago that we’d be 9-2 in the Big East with losses to UConn and Notre Dame, you’d be happy and skeptical at the same time. Yeah, ND was in a 7 game losing streak, but that made them even harder to deal with. They are who we thought they were.

Are there things to be worried about? Absolutely. The deficit is more worrisome than the actual loss itself, and that’s what we need to focus on. But there’s an undeniable offensive slump right now where shots (even decent open ones) aren’t falling, and it’s hard to recover from that. If you recall, we had the same problem against UNLV, and look what happened after that game. Will we go on the same run? Maybe, maybe not. The potential is certainly there to win out, but it’s not guaranteed. But let’s be honest, it never was a guarantee.

But we’re still in the top echelon of the Big East, we’ll likely still be ranked in the top 10 (thanks to Wake and Davidson), and the hardest part of the schedule is over. We just need to stay positive, buckle down, get motivated, and play like the team we should be, not the team we can get away with being. The shots will start falling, and things will come back.

But if they don’t? Well, it was a good run. Life goes on. I hear we’ve got some pretty solid players coming in next year.