Any Surprise That This Notre Dame Basketball Game Ended In This Fashion?

SOUTH BEND ― Entertaining? 

Absolutely. 

Anytime a Notre Dame basketball home game comes down to the closing seconds, with fans in the Purcell Pavilion stands on their feet and what turned out to be two clean looks from 3 before the buzzer, that’s a game worth watching for the price of those $10 tickets. 

Inexcusable? 

Absolutely. 

In every way, shape and basketball form after Notre Dame (11-13 overall; 2-9 ACC) lost for the fourth straight time, the ninth time in the last 10 games and the fifth time in the last six home games and seems destined to let this regular season slip away in a lost way after an 82-79 loss to Florida State Saturday, Feb. 7.

More: Notre Dame basketball shows again it isn't in ACC mix. Can that change? | Noie

We’ll get to how this one ended, and it didn’t end well if you wanted the Irish to figure it out in Atlantic Coast Conference play. But it was the start that doomed this day for the Irish. 

Going in, everyone knew the score. In many of its previous league games, many of its league losses, Notre Dame had little business beating some of the teams it was expected to beat. Not Virginia Tech or North Carolina. Not Clemson, Miami (Fla.) and not Virginia, even in a game Notre Dame led by 19 points. 

Not earlier in the week at No. 23 Louisville. All those teams for now and maybe for good, are better than Notre Dame. They’re more talented. They’re better coached. They’re further along in the process of being a good, competent, confident basketball team. Notre Dame’s not beating those teams in where and what it currently is. 

That’s what made Saturday’s game against Florida State critical. Paramount. Vital. Everything. Not only for what the rest of February will hold but for the team’s chances of just qualifying for the ACC Tournament. Each league loss pushes that goal further away. 

Notre Dame must beat Florida State under first-year coach Luke Loucks. The Seminoles aren’t the Seminoles of old with length and crazy athleticism everywhere and a Hall of Famer in Leonard Hamilton on the sideline. 

These are the new-look Seminoles against the same old Irish. 

Needing a solid start in front of a larger than normal crowd (6,170), Notre Dame was asleep at the wheel. Less than four minutes in, the Irish trailed by 10. Less than eight minutes in, they trailed by 17. The deficit eventually ballooned to 18 before Notre Dame woke up. 

“I’ll take full responsibility for how we started the game,” said Irish head coach Micah Shrewsberry. “I’ve got to have us ready to play from the start. I thought we were way too casual. We’ve got to play with urgency from the start and that’s my fault.” 

Whatever that was in Season Three under Shrewsberry, it was unwatchable. Frustrating in every sense. This program, this roster, this head coach, it’s all supposed to be beyond what we had to watch. Anything said postgame from the head coach or the players was hollow. We've heard it before. We've seen it before. It’s time to stop seeing and hearing it. All of it. 

It didn’t matter what happened the rest of the way – and a lot did – after that sloppy, sluggish, stupid start. Down 27-9 less than 12 minutes in? At home to a team picked to finish 15^th in the league? Yup, that's this Notre Dame. Still. 

Start aside, Notre Dame did what it has often done despite racking up losses as quickly as the snow piling up by the foot around Northern Indiana. The Irish competed. They fought. They showed grit and toughness and did a lot of stuff that was worthy of winning the game in the second half, but let's be honest.

We knew how this one was going to go. 

Notre Dame would get just close enough, the home fans would get just juiced enough to have it all pulled out from under them. A turnover here. A bad shot there. A poor defensive effort thrown in. And in the end, the decision, the dubious and downright dumb decision, to leave a 37% free throw shooter on the floor with 36 seconds remaining in a game the Irish trailed by two. 

The second Florida State saw graduate student Carson Towt still in the game, it was going to foul him. The Seminoles talked about it all week, then talked about it again starting with the two-minute mark. If Towt’s on the floor, Towt’s getting fouled. 

Towt got fouled. He was 0-for-5 up to that point from the foul line. After two more free throws, he was 0-for-7. Which leads to this: why in the name of James Naismith is Towt out there? Understandable that he brings a toughness and a tenacity and a rebounding relentlessness that no one on the Irish roster can match. The closest he should have come to the floor in those closing seconds was the Grotto. Towt is a needed guy for Notre Dame to succeed, but not in that situation. 

Definitely not as the guy being inbounded the ball after a timeout. Like, here, CT, you take this grenade. Uh ...wut? 

“There’s only a couple of guys that we have that can make contested catches in traffic, up in the air, wherever that may be,” Shrewsberry said of going with Towt, who is one of two. 

The other is Jalen Haralson, who had fouled out. Towt was in the game to catch the ball, even though he was going to be fouled. Everyone knew it. 

“Maybe I should have directed it somewhere else,” Shrewsberry said. 

You think? 

Don’t ask someone to do something he hasn’t proven he can do. It’s not Towt’s fault that he’s in the game. 

Saturday was a day Notre Dame needed to flip this ACC script. To get a home win and feel good about itself before going back out on the road against SMU (good luck there). Instead, it was more of the same.

More poor stretches. More questionable coaching decisions. More turnovers. More missed opportunity. More long faces leaving for the locker room after the alma mater. All the explanations why this was not Notre Dame’s night have become so predictable and so tiring. We’re so past that. 

It’s beyond time to see it and not hear it. 

When will enough be enough? 

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 loses yet another ACC game to Florida State