BRO has a nice preview of the Irish today. Interestingly, the article says the Pac-10 team that the Irish is most like is Stanford (which of course is not a great sign). I'm not sure the Irish execute offensively as well as Stanford, but still, the comparison is instructive because the things we needed to do against Stanford are the pretty much the same things we need to do against ND. First, containing a point guard named Chris will be a priority. By containing I mean not only "holding" him to less than 37 points, but mainly stopping him from penetrating. We have to keep him from breaking down our d by himself, either setting up others or scoring himself. and i happen to think we match up fairly well with Thomas, so hopefully we can get this done. Next, also on defense, we need to keep their big men from catching the ball right under the basket. we have to force them away from the hoop before they get the ball.

On offense, it's the same as pretty much every game: we need to get some offense from inside, either from our post players or from dribble penetration. shooting 3s is fine, but we can't just pass the ball around the perimeter and start hoisting up shots - we need some inside-out action. and of course we need to take advantage of the inevitable mismatch with whoever is guarding Dijon Thompson.

anyway, i'm pretty excited about the game today. maybe because over the past few years, these high profile games meant one of two things:
1) getting spanked and embarrassed in front of the whole country, or
2) winning and extending Steve Lavin's coaching tenure just that much longer.

if you're interested, more game previews: LA Times, Daily News, Press-Enterprise.

Go Bruins!