The games are a sports fan’s raison d’être, but there is more to a team’s season than a series of game outcomes. Every season is a story that sometimes unfolds as expected and sometimes unfolds in the most surprising ways. If you watch only the big games or if you ignore the early season games against teams from low level conferences, you miss important parts of the story. You experience the micro-drama of individual games while missing the macro-drama of the season.

A fiction writer puts five basic elements into a story – the characters, the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution. The story of a basketball season has those same elements.

Characters

Normally the important characters are introduced at the beginning of the story, or in this case the basketball season. We would expect them to pick up where they left off in last season’s story, but that wasn’t really the case for the 2014-15 Fighting Irish.

We knew Jerian Grant, but we didn’t know if he was the same guy who left Notre Dame in December 2013 or if he became a more driven Grant after a humbling, potentially life changing experience.

We knew Pat Connaughton, but we didn’t know what summer as a professional baseball player meant to his basketball game.

We met Demetrius Jackson last season, but we found that his performance on the court and in school did not meet the expectations we had for a good high school student who had been a McDonald’s All-American. Who would Jackson be this season?

We knew Zach Auguste, but we had no idea what to expect because he spent the better part of his first two seasons frustrating us with untapped potential.

We knew sophomores Steve Vasturia and V.J. Beachem because they were forced to play ahead of their time last season, and we hoped they would be better for the experience. We felt the same way about junior Austin Burgett who really didn’t play much until last season.

We didn’t know newcomers Martin Geben, Bonzie Colson, and Matt Boo-Boo Farrell; but we would be introduced to them soon enough.

Finally, we knew Mike Brey quite well after 14 seasons as Notre Dame’s head coach.

How true would characters be to their previous selves in other seasons’ stories? That’s a matter for the plot.

Setting

Our story of the season is set in the strange world of college basketball and the Atlantic Coast Conference, a world where four and a half months of basketball games that only seem to matter in terms of how they affect a three weekend single elimination tournament at the end.

For a variety of reasons, our cast of characters missed the tournament in last season’s story; and they want to return. To miss the tournament is to be irrelevant, and most people find irrelevance to be the worst possible fate one can suffer.

The team plays to an often indifferent fan base that seldom finds its way into the story. It is cautious about jumping on a bandwagon whenever there is one, but it is more than happy to engage fully if a game becomes an event. This injects a certain sadness into the setting, albeit self-inflicted sadness as often as not.

Plot

Our tale began with modest goals. Establish a playing rotation. Finish in the top half of the conference. Make the NCAA Tournament. See if you can make it to the second weekend for a change. Nothing too grand, but reasonable after the disaster that was 2013-14.

The season started with three sure-fire victories. Ho-hum… except that the team had a different look to it compared to its predecessors. We saw aggressive perimeter defense, fast breaks galore, and an average score of 93-53. Grant looked motivated. Jackson looked comfortable. The team looked cohesive. Boy, we wanted to believe. It was time for a test.

The first test was East Coast games on consecutive days against a couple of good teams – Massachusetts and Providence; and the Irish passed. They didn’t ace the test, but they showed they could compete with good teams by beating UMass handily and going to the last shot before losing to Providence by one point.

There wasn’t much early suspense, but a story was starting to unfold.

Two more easy games with lopsided scores preceded the first really big moment, Michigan State’s visit to South Bend for the ACC – Big Ten Challenge. This was a game against the big boys, a game against a team that would play great defense, a game against a team with annual Final Four aspirations, and a game that would not only be on national television but would actually draw national interest.

The Irish confirmed everything good we had seen to date with a 79-78 overtime victory, but the game augured some recurring issues that we would see as the season progressed. Grant and Jackson affirmed their transformations by combining for 49 points, but Notre Dame got no production from Auguste and was beaten on the boards by a 43-26 margin.

Outlook improving. Concerns festering.

We did get to meet Austin Torres for the first time. Torres, a lower rated recruit who did not play his first year, was a desperation sub that Brey hoped could give him a few minutes without being a liability. Instead he provided toughness that was lacking on the defensive end of the floor; and despite his lack of big man size, he made life difficult for MSU’s frontcourt.

Cool. Another contributor, a much needed contributor if Auguste wasn’t going to emerge.

Our concern about the big men meant concern about upcoming games with Florida State and Purdue. Both teams played two seven foot men which was going to be a problem unless Auguste got his act together quickly… which he did. The Irish won the games by 20 and 31 points respectively, and they did it with Auguste scoring 26 and 10 points while the Irish improved dramatically on the boards. Auguste fouled out of the Purdue game, but who was worried? It was, after all, a rout. What do a few silly fouls matter in a rout?

It was time for the conference season to begin in earnest, time to see if this team was as good as we were starting to think it was. Both a double overtime victory vs. Georgia Tech and a road victory at North Carolina raised the expectations bar leading to the Virginia game, but problems with rebounding and interior defense returned. If not corrected, the Irish had no chance to beat Virginia.

They did have a chance because they did defend and rebound, but Virginia made more winning plays down the stretch to prevail by 6 points. Hard fought victories over Georgia Tech, Miami, Virginia Tech, and North Carolina followed. The Irish were 19-2/7-1 and ranked in the top 10 with Duke coming to town.

It wasn’t smooth sailing through that winning streak. Auguste had to leave the team before the Georgia Tech game because of an academic issue, and nobody knew if or when he would return. Enter freshman forward Bonzie Colson into the story.

Martin Geben got the first crack at Auguste’s spot, but he didn’t play well. Torres took a turn, but he wasn’t effective against Tech’s bulky front line. The talented but undersized Colson hadn’t played much in conference games and, frankly, didn’t look ready for the speed of college basketball; but he provided a first half spark and wound up logging 22 minutes, scoring 10 points, and grabbing four rebounds.

We had a new fan favorite not named Torres.

As we all know, the Irish defeated Duke. Fans were exuberant, perhaps irrationally so. This team was going places. But there were some nagging problems.

Rebounding and interior defense remained suspect, and Notre Dame kept coming back from double digit deficits to win close games at the end. The latter couldn’t last forever, primarily because of the former.

How were our characters doing at that point?

Grant was a new man from the start of the season. So was Jackson. Vasturia and Beachem had found roles and were contributing every game. Connaughton was the heart and soul of the team. Auguste was delighting us one trip down the floor and driving us crazy seconds later. Geben’s and Torres’ roles have diminished, and Burgett never quite claimed one.

It was all good.

Conflict

No, it wasn’t all good.

Maybe a little burned out, possibly a little full of themselves, the Irish laid an egg at Pittsburgh. Losing to Pitt on the road isn’t per se awful, but it was a terrible defensive effort. Merely mediocre defense by Notre Dame’s standards would have yielded a comfortable victory.

Okay, it was a one-off… or not.

The Irish played well against Boston College for about 15 minutes as they built a 34-9 lead. Then they played poorly for 25 minutes and had to sweat the victory as BC cut the lead to 6 points with 1:47 left in the game.

Next came a 30 point loss to at Duke. You don’t need a summary. You saw it, at least until you needed to avert your eyes.

Were the wheels falling off? Had the team hit a wall? Were opposing coaches finally exploiting its flaws properly? Was such a promising season unraveling before our very eyes?

Every story has a conflict or a crisis to solve, and we are in the middle of that crisis now. The most exciting part of the story is when the conflict builds to its climax and we are about to find out how it will be resolved.

Resolution

The Clemson game was the first step in resolution, at least until tournament time. We have no idea what it means yet. Was it the first step in righting the ship, or was it an ugly, lucky win that briefly interrupted the downward spiral? Will there be adjustments to the team’s lineup and/or its approach during the brief break it gets over the next week? Can Brey push the right emotional buttons to push these guys without alienating them?

It’s just now getting interesting.

If you only watched the big games, Duke, Michigan State, and maybe one or two others, you have been missing a really good story. Now that you have read the Cliff’s Notes version the 2014-15 story, it isn’t too late for affix your undivided attention on what’s left.

More to come… This is the drama that “reality” TV wishes it could create.