More ND Basketball

Everyone knows how great Luke Harangody's numbers have been this season. No one seems to realize that there's probably not another player in the country whose individual performance is less important to his team than Gody. Since the Ohio St. game in December and St. John's game in January, the way that teams beat the Irish is by letting Gody get his 30 pts. per night and eliminating the perimeter game for the Irish (which effectively eliminates MacAlarney, Ayers, and Zeller, the #2, 3, and 5 scoring options, respectively). Good coaches (like Williams at Marquette, Dixon at Pitt, and Huggins at WVU) have realized this and made the appropriate in-game adjustments to respond; bad coaches (like Davis at Providence) haven't done so and have lost because of it.

So Harangody will get his, and ND's 3 guard spots are fairly well set, but who's ND's #2 forward: here's the 3 stat-lines in February (6 games beginning with 2/4 @ Cincy through 2/21 @PC):
Per Game:
Player #1: 3.5pts, 5.7reb, 3.0asst, 0.7stl, 1.3TO, 32.0%FG, 50%FT, 27.0minutes
Player #2: 4.0pts, 3.4reb, 0.4asst, 0.4stl, 0TO, 60.0%FG, 50%FT, 10.8minutes
Player #3: 2.7pts, 1.8reb, 0.2asst, 0.2stl, 0.3TO, 33.3%FT, 100%FT, 9.5 minutes
Per 30 minutes (per minute * 30):
Player #1: 3.9pts, 6.3reb, 3.3asst, 0.7stl, 1.5TO
Player #2: 11.1pts, 9.4reb, 1.1asst, 1.1stl, 0TO
Player #3: 8.4pts, 5.8reb, 0.5asst, 0.5stl, 1.1TO
Player #1 is also the team's weakest interior defender, although he does have a surprising success rate with jump balls. Anyone else see a problem? Player #1 is Zach "I play like a Kyle's mom" Hillesland, player #2 is Tyrone Nash, and player #3 is Luke Zeller.

By the way, this doesn't mean I hate Mike Brey, who is now the 3rd-longest tenured Big East Coach (Boeheim and Calhoun) and has only had one sub-.500 conference record since being hired at ND.