Soft Pretzel Logic

Postgame press conference audio

-- Villanova: Jay Wright, Antonio Peña and Corey Stokes
-- Notre Dame: Mike Brey

It's bad enough when you lose at home in conference play; worse when you do so to a team that hadn't won on the road all season; and even more so when it seems like the only way you're capable of winning a game is by making a big comeback in the second half.

Villanova has defied logic enough times this season, and today logic decided it had seen enough.

Simply put, the way the Wildcats played in today's 90-80 loss to Notre Dame is no way to win a basketball game. Jay Wright knows it, and good to see that commenter Brian already jumped in.

After a Kyle McAlarney three-pointer put Notre Dame up by 17, 68-51, with 5:32 remaining, Jay Wright called timeout and the Wildcats cut the deficit to 11 (70-59) with 3:53 left on a circus layup by Scottie Reynolds.

Notre Dame took it back to 14 (78-64) with 2:35 remaining, but there Villanova went again, another Scottie Reynolds layup making it 84-76 with 49 seconds left and making all of us think they were about to pull off another one of these things.

But then the one Irishman that Villanova genuinely could not stop all day stepped up and took things into his own hands. And it wasn't McAlarney, whose 30 points were a game high.

With the Wildcats pressing after that Reynolds layup, Luke Harangody got free behind the defense, got the ball way in Villanova's end and broke away for a game-sealing slam.

It was the second big dunk in as many minutes for Harangody, the earlier one being a monstrous throwdown from the edge of the lane on the right baseline after taking a nice dish from Tory Jackson.

So it is Harangody, all 6-foot-8 and 251 pounds of him, who gets the Line of the Game:

Eighteen of the points and nine of the rebounds came in the second half.

The final numbers for Notre Dame as a whole were these: 27-for-53 from the field (50.9%), including 9-for-19 from three-point range (47.5%) and 18-for-34 from two-point range (52.9%), and an unbelievable 27-for-38 from the free throw line (71.1%). Nine offensive rebounds, 29 defensive rebounds, 20 assists, 15 turnovers, one block, seven steals and 16 fouls committed.

That adds up to 77 possessions and 1.168 points per possession.

For Villanova, whose leading scorer was Antonio Peña with 17 points (to go with nine rebounds), these were the final numbers: 32-for-72 from the field (44.4%), including 7-for-21 from beyond the arc (33.3%) and 25-for-51 from inside it (49.0%), and 9-for-12 from the line. Fourteen offensive rebounds, 26 defensive rebounds, 19 assists, 14 turnovers, two blocks, eight steals and 29 fouls committed.

That adds up to 78 possessions and 1.030 points per possession.

(As an aside, Malcolm Grant was only 2-for-7 from the field, including 2-for-4 from three, and he missed his first three and last two shots.)

The numbers that matter most, though, are these: Notre Dame took 38 free throws and Villanova took 72 field goal attempts.

The formula for offensive free throw rate is free throws made divided by field goal attempts. Notre Dame's free throw rate in this game was 71.7%, while Villanova's was only 12.5%.

Think about that while I head up to the Liacouras Center.