Notre Dame Basketball: Elite Offense. Defense?… Not So Much

Because we love Notre Dame basketball here at the Notre Dame Blog, we’re not going to sugar coat today’s entry. There is a problem with the Fighting Irish hoops team that needs to be addressed now in order to avoid more painful events in the future. I’m talking about defense.

As of yesterday, Notre Dame is ranked in the top 15 in the AP, but their defensive efficiency (the amount of points they give up per 100 opponent possessions) is not exactly consummate with their stature overall. According to Luke Winn’s article, Notre Dame is showing early warning signs of bad things to come in the tournament because they haven’t yet played defense on an elite level. They have a Defensive Efficiency score of 99.1, ranking them 146th overall. Why don’t they play defense as well as they should? There are many possible reasons. Perhaps they blew out too many opponents and didn’t focus on D in the first half of the season. The Irish are ranked No. 3 overall in offensive efficiency(119.7) after all.

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Permalink - Posted in General on January 7, 2009 - Post a comment