1. The Notre Dame women’s team shattered all sorts of records on Friday, two of which were Free Throws made and Free Throws attempted. The Irish went to the line 52 times, and they took 57 shots from the floor. That’s a FT Rate of 91.2%. For the season their rate is 42.2%, which would be about 75th in the men’s game. Notre Dame entered the game shooting 72% from the line, and against Mercer converted 82.7%. Whitney Holloway can’t be happy about missing her only two attempts. Mercer, in their futility, went to the line 19 times and made 9.
2. Skylar Diggins is a beast. As a sophomore she was 1st Team All Big East and a 3rd Team All American. She was only the 2nd Notre Dame player in history to get to 1,000 points before the end of her sophomore season. She only played 16 minutes against Mercer, but very nearly pulled off a perfect game. She was 7-7 on 2s, 1-1 on 3s, 4-4 on FTs, and had 4 assists and a steal. Her blemish was a single turnover. It’s no wonder she has over 132,000 followers on Twitter (@SkyDigg4).
3. Since school records focus on stats that have little meaning without interpretation (like rebounds), another school record must have been recorded but it won’t be captured in the record book. Notre Dame missed 17 shots. Notre Dame got 13 offensive rebounds. That’s a single game Off Reb rate of 76.5%. Mercer, meanwhile, missed 40 shots and grabbed 9 offensive boards for 22.5% Off Reb rate.
4. This was an up and down game with 83 possessions. In those 83 possessions Mercer turned the ball over 28 times, or 33.7% of their trips. Alicia Williams had 8 turnovers. Tabitha Bradshaw had 7. And poor Precious Bridges had a game she’d like to forget, with 6 turnovers in just 11 minutes of action. Of Mercer’s 83 possessions, 7 ended at the hands of Precious: 6 turnovers and a missed shot.
5. Notre Dame’s previous high score was 113 points, but they poured in 128 against Mercer. In 83 possessions that’s an average of 1.54 per trip. That’s 7% higher than any single men’s game this season. In other words, they scored a shitload. In addition to most points and the previously mentioned free throw records, they established new marks for points in a road game, margin of victory, points in a single half, and field goal percentage.
