Notre Dame guards just fine speeding game up against WSU (VIDEO)

Wichita State’s guards lamented the slow pace of play in the Missouri Valley Conference as the season drug on. Teams, as Fred VanVleet put it, “knew exactly what plays we were going to run” and it brought some contests to a crawl.

In NCAA Tournament wins over Indiana and Kansas, the Shockers seemed just fine playing at a faster pace. In Thursday’s 81-70 loss to Notre Dame in the Sweet 16, they finally ran into a set of guards they couldn’t keep up with.

“You end up pulling the ball out of the net a lot, and that’s not good,” VanVleet said. “They did a great job of establishing the pace early on.”

Nobody played at a quicker pace than Notre Dame sophomore guard Demetrius Jackson, a former McDonald’s All-American who scored 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting, including 4 of 5 on three-pointers.

Jackson was good enough against the Shockers that Notre Dame’s leading scorer and All-ACC shooting guard Jerian Grant was content to sit back and distribute the ball — he finished with 11 assists, well above his 6.6 average.

“Speeding it up against us is going to be tough because we’ve got so many weapons, so many scorers,” Grant said. “You want to speed the game up against us that’s going to be tough for you.

“(Jackson) has that type of talent to play like that in the biggest moments. He’s special. We just hope we can get that from him again on Saturday.”

Notre Dame’s speed didn’t come as a surprise for the Shockers — nor did their whip-quick ball movement around the perimeter. Their success in shooting the ball was another story.

“The scout made it real clear how quick their guards were, made it real clear exactly the pace they liked to play at,” WSU guard Tekele Cotton said. “(Notre Dame) came out and executed pretty much perfectly ... they were tough to stop.”

Cotton holding Grant drastically below his average — he scored nine and averages 16.8 — would usually be enough to stay in the hunt with the Irish. But with Notre Dame’s other guard, Steve Vasturia, seemingly able to score against whoever the Shockers threw at him (a combination of Evan Wessel, Rashard Kelly and Zach Brown), it freed Jackson.

And he was never moving faster than when the Shockers went up 38-37 with 16:40 left in the second half.

Jackson responded with back-to-back three-pointers in 19 seconds to put the Irish up 43-38 and they never trailed again.

“That’s a really fun way to play,” Jackson said. “Stepping up, taking big shots and knocking them down. That’s the type of player I want to be.”

VanVleet pointed out that it wasn’t just three-pointers that sank WSU — Irish guards also blew by for layups any which way. Backdoor screens, dribble-drive ... it all worked against the Shockers.

“They just shot layup after layup, it seemed like, and we just for whatever reason couldn't stop them,” VanVleet said. “So we just wanted to battle, try to keep battling throughout the game, just keep running them off but they were pretty hot, knocking down shots, so give them all the credit.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2015 at 9:57 PM with the headline "Notre Dame guards just fine speeding game up against WSU (VIDEO)."