• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Harangody stars as Notre Dame pounds Seton Hall

Feb 7, 2008 - 6:39 AM SOUTH ORANGE, New Jersey (Ticker) -- Luke Harangody scored 22 points as No. 21 Notre Dame rolled to its fourth straight win with a 95-69 victory over Seton Hall in the Big East Conference on Wednesday.

Kyle McAlarney scored 19 points and Rob Kurz added 17 for the Fighting Irish (17-4, 7-2 Big East), who shot 55 percent (35-of-64) in surpassing 90 points for the fifth time this season.

With the sizzling offensive effort, Notre Dame picked up its second straight league road win after opening Big East play by dropping the first two.

"This is our second straight road win and coach has a lot of confidence in this group," Harangody said.

The Fighting Irish also went 9-of-19 (47 percent) on 3-pointers and handed out 19 assists.

"We're a pretty good team offensively and we can really put numbers up," Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said. "We pass the ball really well because our big guys are really good basketball players, they catch and pass the ball really well."

"Notre Dame is a special team, we just saw the two best teams in the league back-to-back," Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez said. "Mike Brey told me after the game that Notre Dame played the best they played all year. They made every shot, and everything went their direction."

Already holding a 24-15 lead less than 9 1/2 minutes into the game, the Fighting Irish blew open the contest behind a 10-0 run. McAlarney capped the burst with one of his five 3-pointers.

"We really got off to a great start offensively and when we do that, we get pretty confident," Brey said. "We shot it well and we were able to get the ball down the floor against their pressure and get some easy shots."

Notre Dame went on to hold a 47-27 cushion at the half, and extended the lead to 33 points at 93-60 on two free throws by Kurz with 3:42 remaining.

Harangody also grabbed 13 rebounds as the Irish finished with a 49-31 advantage on the boards.

"This was normally an area that we have been pounded in before," Brey said about his team's rebounding. "I thought that against this team that we could really do some damage in there, and I think that maybe except for one game we have outrebounded everyone we've played in the Big East this year."

Freshman Jeremy Hazell scored 26 points for the Pirates (15-8, 5-5), who dropped to 0-4 against ranked teams this season.

"We have to look at the big picture, we are 15 and 8 and we are 5 and 5 in the league and we hold the tiebreaker against Cincinnati, we won an important game against Providence and we won an important game against Rutgers," Gonzalez said. "We are jockeying for position because we are trying to get into the top twelve."

Seton Hall had a bit of bad luck midway through the first half when Paul Gause went down with a left knee injury. The fifth-best scorer for the Pirates at 8.1 points, the junior finished with just one point.

"It's hard to say, he hurt his knee," Gonzalez said. "It seemed kind of serious, but I do not want to speculate because I don't know. It was kind of like a freak play and just came down wrong with nobody around him."