To discern any evidence of post-holiday break rust in Notre Dame on Saturday, you had to show up early. Like before-the-tipoff early, for a glitch in the Irish’s pregame choreography.
Luke Harangody, the Irish’s burly leading scorer, kept his warm-up pants on for lineup introductions. At the end of the teammate handshake line, Harangody made his usual leap to meet guard Tory Jackson for a midair chest bump.
And the warm-up pants promptly fell to his ankles.
The presence of Harangody’s game shorts prevented a wardrobe malfunction and years of therapy for the witnesses at the Joyce Center. But the slip-down amounted to the only slip-up of the night, as an 87-54 throttling of Brown was plenty crisp, considering it was the Irish’s second game in three weeks.
“It’s a big week for us; it’s a critical time in our season,” said forward Rob Kurz, who led Notre Dame with 15 points and 11 rebounds. “We just have a really good frame of mind coming into it.
“[Coach Mike Brey] told us, once we got back from Christmas, to approach every game like it’s the Big East season. That’s the way we approached this game.”
The Irish (9-2) stomped to a seventh straight victory with 22 offensive rebounds and just seven turnovers while holding Brown (6-5) to 32.7 percent shooting.
But this was Notre Dame’s first game in a week, just the second in 21 days, theoretically a recipe for reducing energy to a dim flicker.
Against the Bears, however, there was no Brown-out. Facing a methodical club permitting a fraction more than 65 points per game, Notre Dame piled up 48 in the first half alone.
“To put 48 points on the board in a game where you don’t have as many possessions says a lot about how efficient we were,” Brey said.
Indeed, Brown was content to sit in a zone, and the Irish were content to locate the gaps. Notre Dame fired at a 51.4 percent clip in the first half, with 13 assists on 18 field goals and 8 of 16 efficiency on threes. Three straight bombs from long distance, in fact, gave Notre Dame its biggest pre-intermission lead at 46-22 with a minute left before the break.
The comedy interludes, really, were the only moments of interest. First there was Harangody’s mishap. Then, after the Irish picked up a seventh foul in the first eight minutes, Brey uncorked a one-liner that had even the officials chuckling.
“Is this a FIBA game?” the Irish coach barked.
The rest was a joke, too, after Notre Dame’s lead swelled into the 30s in the second half.
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bchamilton@tribune.com
