Notre Dame-Louisville classic highlights crazy week in college hoops
By DOUG GRIFFITHS
ISL Assistant Editor
Just when you think you’ve seen it all in sports, Saturday’s college basketball games come along.
First came unranked Wisconsin’s improbable win over No. 3 Michigan.
When is the last time you saw a player tie a game or win one with a halfcourt shot? If you’re talking Big Ten games, it would have to be Ohio State’s Evan Turner heave to beat Michigan in the 2010 Big Ten Tournament.
Well, Badger guard Ben Brust gave us the latest memorable halfcourt shot.
Brust received an inbounds pass from Mike Bruesewitz in stride and launched it just inside midcourt. Swish. Time expired and the game headed to overtime tied at 60.
Brust was the hero in overtime, too, as he drilled a tiebreaking three-pointer with less than 40 seconds left to help Wisconsin knock off Michigan.
The Wolverines were the third top three team to lose during the week. No. 1 Indiana was stunned at Illinois and No. 2 Florida fell to Arkansas.
As it turned out, that Big Ten game was just a precursor to what was to come in South Bend later in the evening.
In all honesty, the Louisville-Notre Dame game was pretty boring, that is until the final minute. The Fighting Irish were on life support at best, trailing by seven with 1:14 left in regulation.
That’s when Jerian Grant turned in a performance the great Michael Jordan, or maybe Reggie Miller, would’ve been proud of. He went off in the last 45 ticks. He hit all three of his three-pointers in a span of just 23 seconds (from the 44-second mark until the 21-second mark). Is that incredible or what?
Grant scored 12 points in 45 seconds, including a traditional 3-point play to tie the game at 60.
Even after the remarkable rally that sent the game into overtime, who knew that was just the beginning of what was to be one of the most incredible regular-season games in the history of college basketball.
Notre Dame’s chances of pulling out the victory even in the first overtime weren’t good with leading scorer Jack Cooley on the bench having fouled out.
It didn’t matter. The Fighting Irish had plenty of fight left in them, defying the odds and somehow, someway finding a way to extend the game overtime after overtime after overtime.
In the fifth overtime, Notre Dame’s lineup had been depleted to the point where it was without three starters and Garrick Sherman, who had hardly seen any action the last six games, played like an All-American in the paint.
Sherman was unconscious. He finished with 17 points in 21 minutes.
It was Sherman’s tip in that tied the score at 93 with five seconds left that forced the game into a historic fifth overtime.
When is the last time you saw a five-overtime game? Probably the 2009 Big East Tournament when Syracuse and Connecticut needed six extra sessions before deciding a winner.
The Notre Dame-Louisville game nearly went six OTs, but Cardinals’ Russ Smith’s triple missed and Notre Dame students rushed the floor for the second time this season.
The game goes into the records books as the longest in Big East regular-season history.
It certainly was one I’ll never forget.
During my career as a sports writer/editor, I’ve covered too many college basketball games to count, but I’ve never witnessed a finish quite like this one in the shadows of the Golden Dome.
Considering what I’ve seen over the last six months covering Notre Dame football and men’s basketball, my mindset is expect the unexpected. Anything can happen at the place where Touchdown Jesus and No. 1 Moses calls home and usually does, and usually it favors the Fighting Irish or at least recently it is favorable to the team wearing blue and gold.
