Basketball Game Preview: Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs. Knoxville Catholic Fighting Irish

Notre Dame hasn't had much luck against Knoxville Catholic recently, but that could start to change on Saturday. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are taking a road trip to square off against the Knoxville Catholic Fighting Irish at 4:30 p.m. Expect the scorekeeper to be kept busy: if their previous games are any indication, both will really light up the scoreboard.

Notre Dame is headed in fresh off scoring the most points they have all season. They simply couldn't be stopped on Thursday as they easily beat St. Andrews-Sewanee 74-23. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the team's high-flying offense, the game also marked the team's biggest victory of the season.

Notre Dame can attribute much of their success to Gaas Herman, who posted 15 points, and Walt Wagnon, who put up 14 points. The contest was Herman's 13th in a row with at least ten points. Another player making a difference was Cooper Campbell, who scored ten points.

Meanwhile, Knoxville Catholic had already won three in a row (a stretch where they outscored their opponents by an average of 13.3 points) and they went ahead and made it four on Friday. They walked away with a 78-69 win over the Fighting Cocks. Given the Fighting Irish's advantage in MaxPreps' Tennessee basketball rankings (they are ranked 22nd, while the Fighting Cocks are ranked 208th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.

Knoxville Catholic's victory was their seventh straight at home dating back to last season, which pushed their record up to 13-4. As for Notre Dame, their win ended an eight-game drought at home dating back to last season and bumped them up to 8-11.

Notre Dame ended up a good deal behind Knoxville Catholic in their previous meeting back in November of 2022, losing 71-55. Can Notre Dame avenge their defeat or is history doomed to repeat itself? We'll find out soon enough.