LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE — There are going to be bumps and bruises all over St. Francis’ 7-foot-4 junior Cherif Millogo after the way Notre Dame wrestled with him on Thursday.
Notre Dame did a good job of smothering Golden Knights sophomore guard Luke Paulus too, and it was all too much for the Golden Knights to deal with in a 71-48 loss.
St. Francis (18-4, 2-2) showed some growth when it played nationally ranked Sierra Canyon to a close 50-47 loss last week, but it showed the growing pains of a young squad against Notre Dame, who improved to 15-6 and 2-2 in the Mission League.
Millogo finished with a team-high 16 points to go with 10 rebounds, three steals and two assists, but was held to just four points in the second half.
“All credit goes to them, they were great, they were physical,” St. Francis coach Todd Wolfson said. “We got to do a better job coaching and figuring it out. This is all part of learning.”
Notre Dame started to frustrate Millogo at times, who is going to have to get use to teams looking to take away his size with double-teams and physical play.
“They pushed and grabbed and held his jersey, and he’s going to get that,” Wolfson said. “It’s part of being a target. He’s starting to get his name where it is, and people want to have a piece of him. We’ve got to grow and learn from that experience.”
St. Francis trailed for much of the first quarter, but fought back, and it was a tie game, 28-28, with a minute left in the half.
But Notre Dame finished with five straight points to take a 33-28 lead at half, and turned the five points into a 12-0 run into the third quarter.
St. Francis never recovered, getting outscored 24-9 in the third quarter to fall behind 57-37. It got worse in the fourth quarter, as they fell behind by 30 points.
You can credit Notre Dame’s Navorro Bowman, a 6-4 junior guard with offers to California, Penn State and Illinois. Bowman finished with a game-high 21 points, and did the dirty work guarding Paulus on the defensive end.
“Aside from (Millogo), we took away their guard (Paulus), that’s their main floor facilitator, and it was my job to take that away.” Bowman said.
Millogo got going early, and had an eye-popping dunk off a pass from Paulus in the first half. But Notre Dame made some adjustments at half to slow him down.
“Our motive was to hit him (Millogo) down below, and don’t let him dominate the game,” Bowman said. “In the beginning he got going but we stopped all that in the second half.”
Notre Dame didn’t shoot particularly well, but it drained 13 three-pointers. Zachary White added 13 points and Tahj Skinner and Ilan Nikolov finished with eight points apiece.
Norte Dame coach Matt Sargeant thought their effort for 32 minutes was the difference.
“We had a game plan, and we always want to give full effort, and we did that,” Sargeant said. “Luke Paulus is a phenomenal guard, he’s one of the best in the Mission League. It takes a lot to get him frustrated. I don’t know if we were successful doing that, but we did everthing we could.”
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