(Photo Courtesy of Notre Dame Athletics)

Days after Micah Shrewsberry went off on an unsolicited rant to close out his postgame press conference following his team’s loss to Louisville, his Notre Dame men’s basketball team responded with its worst performance of the season.

Notre Dame’s star player, Markus Burton, played the worst individual game of his career—scoring just two points and turning the ball over four times. Burton was even benched for the start of the 2nd half.

No button Shrewsberry touched worked as Notre Dame was torched at home to SMU, losing 97-73 in front of a sparse crowd at Purcell Pavilion.

“Confidence is a crazy thing,” a low toned Shrewsberry said postgame. “Maybe we believed in ourselves too much. Last year’s team knew if we didn’t scrap, if we didn’t claw, if we didn’t hold people 50 points, that we had zero chance. I have done a poor job defensively with this group from the start. We don’t have that same grittiness, toughness and identity.”

The 2nd year Irish coach says the performance Notre Dame put out there Wednesday won’t happen again.

“We have five games left. People might be us but there won’t be a one where we are not competing because I will just play with the dudes that are.”

Shrewsberry said he had a number of former players reach out to him in the last couple of days.

“I apologize to those guys that put in the blood, sweat and tears for this program. The fans that are still out there fighting for us, I apologize to them because that there is not Notre Dame basketball. This is rock bottom. It’s not going to be like this anymore. I need five guys and all my timeouts. That’s it.”

It’s the fifth loss in six games for the Irish, who fall to 11-15 overall and 5-10 in the ACC.

“For the last two days, the word that has been on our white board and we’ve talked about in huddles has been urgency and we just didn’t have it, we just didn’t bring it,” Shrewsberry said.

Shrewsberry says while the team was blown out against North Carolina last year, they continued to fight.

“This was the first time I haven’t seen this group have that same fight at the start,” Shrewsberry continued. “We had it late. Different guys stepped up and played hard in the 2nd half but we didn’t play with any sense of urgency and that’s on me for not getting them ready.”

How bad was the start? It was 25-5 midway through the 1st half.

“We have five guaranteed games left,” Shrewsberry said using a phrase from the Marcus Freeman playbook. “You aren’t guaranteed tomorrow let alone what happens in March sometimes. You don’t take anything for granted. That for me is the most disappointing thing. You can get beat. People can out execute us, out talent us, but they should never out effort us.”

Braedon Shrewsberry led Notre Dame with 21 points while Tae Davis scored 13.

“We’re all in this together,” the 2nd year Irish coach said. “We win together, we lose together. They are taking their cues from me. Maybe I need to change what we are doing in practice. Maybe I need to change what we are doing in shootaround or whatever it is. We can’t come out like this. It’s new territory. I need to figure out why it is we started this way.”

SMU led wire-to-wire, taking a 50-25 advantage into halftime and built its lead to as large as the 34 with 8 minutes left in the 2nd half.

Saint Joe High School alum JR Konieczny, seeing his most minutes in quite some time, scored seven. ND’s other local, Burton of Penn High School, was just 1-6 shooting. He scored his only points in the 1st half and only attempted one shot in nine minutes of action in the 2nd half. Burton averages 22 points a game.

Asked why Burton didn’t start the 2nd half, Shrewsberry said you get to where they were at in the game, you are just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

“You were just hoping for some kind of juice or some kind of energy and I was hoping those five [the one that started the 2nd half] could provide it,” Shrewsberry said.

Notre Dame is back at home for its “Irish Wear Green” game Saturday at 2:15pm against Pitt.