ESPN College GameDay picked the right game to feature this week as Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center gave us the game of the regular season. Notre Dame vs Louisville on Saturday night was a 5 OT masterpiece won by ND 104-101. This was reminiscent of the 6 OT Big East Tournament game between UConn and Syracuse. Contests like these make me sad that this is a soon to be defunct conference. This was easily the college basketball game of the year.
The Fighting Irish won a game they had no business winning. Their star Jack Cooley missed the last 30 minutes, and at the end of regulation you had a boring low scoring 60-60 game in which nobody could shoot. This was the second time in school history that Notre Dame has been the host for College GameDay during the basketball season. Purcell Pavilion was the site of the morning show and primetime basketball contest on Jan. 24, 2009, when the Irish played Connecticut.
Coupled with visits for football, next month’s College GameDay broadcast will mark the 10th time the ESPN crews have visited Notre Dame. Not sure if that includes the Declan Sullivan tragedy or not. And of course ESPN didn’t cover the Lizzy Seeberg tragedy.
Including the trip to Notre Dame, the ESPN basketball College GameDay crew visited the Hoosier State three times in ’12-’13. I know this was a very crazy and emotional game, but rushing the court? Because of #25 beating #11? Notre Dame is too good a program to be storming the court over this.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, a Google News site generating millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Chicago Tribune.com, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports
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