Notre Dame Basketball: 3 takeaways from huge win over North Carolina

Nate Laszewski had his best night of the year

Nate Laszewski that we saw play Wednesday night against North Carolina was the Nate Laszewski that Irish fans expected to see all year long. They finally were able to see it as the big man scored 20 points for the first time this season. Nate Laszewski in the 20-21 season was a huge part of the offense for Notre Dame. For some reason, it just has not transitioned over to this season with being a consistent scorer for the Irish until this matchup against North Carolina.

Last year at this time in the season Laszewski scored in double figures in eight of the first nine games. This season he has only reached double digits in scoring four times. Hopefully, for Notre Dame, this is a turning point for their big man. The Irish are going to need his scoring regularly if they want to go on a run and get back into the NCAA Tournament conversation in the next few months.

Not everybody has a guy who is close to seven feet tall who can step outside and do damage from beyond the three-point line. It really just comes down to consistency with the Jupiter Florida native. As we saw on Wednesday night a lot of big guys like Bacot and Manek are not extremely confident with coming out and playing defense outside of the paint. The Irish and Laszewski really have to make sure this is in the game plan moving forward the rest of the way.

If Laszewski can continue to shoot as he did against North Carolina and be a consistent scorer this just provides the Irish with more scoring to go along with Dane Goodwin and Blake Wesley on a regular basis.