Notre Dame's Mike Brey on Duke Loss: I Was Talking About Monday Night During Timeouts

Irish coach blown out at Duke

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey was a little shell shocked after Notre Dame’s 94-60 loss at Duke.

“That counted as one loss? That counted as one league loss?” he asked, facetiously. “Ok, I can live with that. Wow, they were great, they were fabulous. When they’re shooting like that around the big guy (Vernon Carey), I don’t know what to do. Then they really guarded us. We had a hard time getting any look, because of their ball pressure.”

After Duke went on a huge second-half run, Brey started looking ahead.

“For us, the whole last 10 minutes in timeouts I was talking about Monday night. Because we’ve got to turn around mentally here and get ready to play against North Carolina on Monday, and see if we can get out of this stretch that started at Clemson, 2-2. If we can do that, I’ll take that. That’s probably as good as it gets. But, they were rolling. Again, when they shoot it like that from different spots around the big fella, what do you do? They get to 90 so easy.”

Notre Dame has one of the conference’s best big men in John Mooney, but Duke’s guard were so dominant defensively, it helped to keep the ball out of Mooney’s hands. “I think their ball pressure really bothered us,” Brey said. “I’m really pleased. I thought (Juwan) Durham really played well and battled, and, you know, Johnny(Mooney) is Johnny, but we couldn’t get anything going from our guards. I think it was their ball pressure. They kept a number of bodies, fresh guys on you, where they’re pressuring you.”