Welcome back to another edition of Irish Illustrated Inside here, brought to you by Irish Illustrated.com.

Tim O'Malley here with Tim Priester, Pete Sampson on vacation, scouting three stars in an undisclosed location for a little while, getting some well-deserved rest. And speaking to rest, Tim, back from Travels with the Irish during the NCAA tournament. We're going to hit on that, obviously. It was a great run. I think the run really brought Notre Dame basketball fans kind of back into it. That's what it takes in the NCAA tournament time is when people, these casual fans, so every team tend to focus a little bit more. Of course, we have a lot of football news. Notre Dame had been off for Easter break. They're back at it as of yesterday. But I think we should start with real games and what was probably the most impressive of the two runs of the last two years considering our expectations.

Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, this is not as good a basketball team as last year with the loss of Grant and Conrad, and yet they eventually developed their own identity. Didn't finish the

regular season playing particularly well. But, you know, there's a lot to be said for an NCAA

tournament experience, and they have it now, and they believe that they should be.

They absolutely believe now, and this is how quickly this has happened, they absolutely believe they should be playing the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.

And that's a great start.

If you can consistently get to the Sweet 16, I wouldn't say it's all gravy at that point because you've now had two

shots at the final four and couldn't come up with a victory. But, you know, you run into a Kentucky

last year in a North Carolina this year. And obviously North Carolina is a machine right now. But,

you know, it's a great run. And I think that, you know, that's one of the fun things about covering something

like that because you see and feel the emotion and the confidence building with a program.

And that was absolutely clear in Brooklyn, and it was clear again this past weekend in Philadelphia

that they believed that they were going to get there. And they just came up a little bit short against a team that's really really playing

well and just to circle back to their confidence and expectations it was it mid-January we're the two

of us and people were sitting here just railing on them why aren't they more confident why did they

not carry over last year they carried it over when it mattered yeah they did they did. They built to it. Vijay Beecham, I think there was one point during the end of the year where I turned around to you guys on Press Row and thought, why does VJ. Beecham have just free reign. He's never, he started 29 games. We couldn't believe VJ. Beach was the one guy you don't pull off. Well, he was also one of the five best players of the NCAA tournament to date, so I think it worked out well. I mean, he looks like the first team all-ACC going into next year. He's not just a shooter anymore. No, he really, and that's a great thing. And he talked about that before we all went to Philadelphia that, you know, somebody asked him, well, why are you,

you know, why are you suddenly playing so well and putting them numbers? And he said, because

I'm not playing against the same guys in the ACC that I have for the last 1820 games. Now,

the advantage he had was he added the penetration game. He was way better. Oh, yeah.

He's a different basketball player.

Yeah, absolutely.

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