Are you kidding me?

St. John's: 71 

# 7 Notre Dame: 65

It's almost laughable that this could happen.  St. John's is not by anyones standards a good basketball team.  They are not bound to make the tournament or even the NIT.  There's no excuse that a team coming off a 3 game losing streak (including a blow out loss against Providence) should be able to even compete with the #7 team in the country.  Every decent team that they played they lost bad, until today.  Ridiculous.  You can't afford to lose games like this.  

I have to think there are 4 main reasons why the game was lost today:

Reason #1: REBOUNDING

Out rebounded by 11.  It's hard to find anybody on the team but Gody who had any rebounds. No boxing out.  They just worked harder, simple as that.

Reason #2: DEFENSE

The Irish played defense worse than a high school JV team this game.  I mean they let everyone in the lane and didn't check any cutters.  One time really made me angry was that one of the St. John's players got an offensive rebound around 7 feet out, the Irish players just looked at him and he takes an uncontested jump shot from like lay-up range.  He missed it but still,  I didn't think it was possible against a division 1 basketball program to have time to collect yourself after a rebound and then shoot a 7 foot jumper uncontested.  Terrible defense. 

Reason #3:  NO SCORING

Aside from Harangody, no one did much.  I find it hard to believe that 65 points were even scored.  I said this after Ohio State and will say it again.  When one of the Irish stars (Gody and K-Mac) is shut down the team has a hard time winning.  Kyle McAlarney finished with 10 points but went 1-5 from deep.  Gody had 28 points and 14 bounds, obviously this loss was not one him.  

Reason #4:  Outworked

Once again aside from Luke, the team was outworked.  It seemed that Harangody was the only Irish player bringing any energy to the team.

Harangody is excused from all of the reasons but defense.  He needs to work on his defense.  The guards of St. John's were driving in and challenging him all day and kept scoring over him. 

Monday's game is now even more important than it already was.  Georgetown is also coming off a loss so they should be hungry for a win as well.  One advantage for the Irish is that the game is at home, where the 43 game in a row streak is being threatened by the strong Hoya team.  Pending the final outcome of BYU vs #6 Wake Forrest, the Irish could come home to defend the longest active home-court winning streak.

To end this embarrassing day on a good note,  practically every top 25 team lost this week so there might not be as big a drop in the polls as their normally would be.