ACC Basketball: Biggest winners and losers from Week 1 of 2023-24 season
Losers: Notre Dame Fighting Irish
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish took an ugly 81-71 home loss to the Western Carolina Catamounts on Saturday afternoon. They’re currently led by freshmen Markus Burton and Carey Booth and junior Julian Roper II before there’s a huge dropoff in scoring production.
Burton’s managed to lead the team in scoring with 23.0 ppg on 48.6 percent shooting from the field along with 4.5 rpg and 3.0 apg. Booth has held things down in the frontcourt off the bench, posting 15.0 ppg, 7.0 rpg and 1.5 bpg across 23.0 minutes per contest. Roper has proven to be a do-it-all guard for them as he averages 10.5 ppg and 6.0 rpg in the starting lineup.
They’ve got a strong trio to start things out, but after them, things start to fall apart as a whole for Notre Dame. It could be a lot of growing pains for them as they’re another squad in the conference who have given up more points than they’ve scored. They’ve allowed 67.0 ppg while scoring 65.5 ppg through their first two games.
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The Fighting Irish will have an interesting time finding their identity as a squad under a new regime. It could be a long season in the ACC once again under new head coach Micah Shrewsberry following a 3-17 finish in the conference in 2022-23. Don’t be surprised if the Fighting Irish struggle to string together a few wins this season.