After Notre Dame junior guard DJ Brown nailed his third 3-pointer late in regulation to force overtime, teammate Cole McCormick and the Fighting Irish defense took over to help seal a 62-54 non-district win at Arts & Sciences Tuesday.
“DJ had been struggling shooting the ball, but we have full confidence in him,” Fighting Irish coach Jonathan Adams said. “He got things going by getting to the rim and making some big time plays. On his game-tying three late in the fourth, we were actually going to run the play for Cole and Cole points to DJ and says, ‘Hey let’s run it for DJ’ So we run it for DJ and as he has done throughout his career, makes a big time shot.”
Brown finished with 12 of his 17 points after halftime while McCormick had a game-high 18 points, including 10 in overtime, and had a crucial go-ahead put back to take a 56-54 lead.
Wilkerson helped seal the game with a block and was huge on the offensive glass, along with Josh McGee for Notre Dame (14-6), which was without senior star Tim Vaughn due to sickness.
“We really wanted this game bad because we lost to them in two overtimes in the season opener,” said McCormick, who made six straight free throws in overtime to ice the game. “Everyone stepped up tonight and made big plays.”