Sports Commentary: Notre Dame win streak not luck

Don't call it the luck of the Irish.\nNotre Dame's seven-game Big East win streak has been anything but that. With their 69-66 win in West Virginia Sunday, the Irish upped their overall record to 16-5 and moved their conference mark to 8-2. \nThat puts the Irish, ranked 21st by the ESPN/USA Today poll, atop the brilliantly named Big East, West Division, one game ahead of No. 7 Syracuse. \nThe Irish are peaking when coaches want their teams to be peaking. Their winning streak has not only given them a great opportunity to win the top seed in the Big East tournament, but it came after many critics had seemingly written off the Irish. Mike Brey's squad dropped three of four games in early January, and two of its first three in the conference. Then Notre Dame came smashing down, falling out of the Top 25 for the first time all year, after having been ranked as high as No. 10. \nAt that point, the Irish began to hear the suspected reasons why they had hit the wall and why they wouldn't be able to recover: losing coach Matt Doherty to North Carolina was too much to overcome in one season; All-American Troy Murphy didn't have the supporting cast in place to compete in the Big East -- "Murph" wouldn't be able to carry the Irish all year long; and after all, Notre Dame is a football school.\nBut the Irish obviously didn't subscribe to any of those theories, turning their season around by winning three consecutive games at home before going on the road to beat Georgetown and Pittsburgh. The Irish returned to South Bend with a victory against St. John's last Monday before coming from behind in Sunday's win against West Virginia. \nMurphy has been stellar during the win streak, pouring in 34 points and grabbing 16 rebounds against Syracuse and scoring another 34 points against St. John's. The junior forward now boasts a 23.2 scoring average to go along with nine rebounds a game. \nBut Murphy hasn't done it alone. The improved play of senior Ryan Humphrey inside has been key to several of the wins. Humphrey is only 0.6 rebounds a game shy of averaging a double-double. The Irish have stepped it up on defense, too, limiting their opponents to 65 points per contest. \nAnd Brey has made slight changes in the starting lineup that have paid off.\nThe seven consecutive conference wins are the most in Notre Dame's brief Big East history, but the Irish don't intend to end their streak now. With matchups this week against Rutgers and Seton Hall, 2-8 and 3-7 in the Big East, respectively, the Irish should boost their conference mark to 10-2. They would then head into their crucial Feb. 21 battle against No. 11 Boston College with a nine-game win streak and a lot of confidence. The eventual BC-ND winner will most likely win the regular season Big East title and grab the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament.\nThe way things are now, the Irish are all but guaranteed of earning their first NCAA tournament berth since the 1989-1990 season. \nMarch Madness implications\nIn the last few weeks many teams have severely damaged their postseason prospects while others have greatly enhanced theirs, with Notre Dame as a prime example of the latter. Here are some teams on the decline and some on the rise, as well as Monday's 16 top seeds:\nImproving their stock: Providence, Boston College, Iowa State, IU, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Kentucky\nSlipping at the worst time: Iowa, Virginia, Tennessee, Maryland, Purdue, Texas\nNo. 1s: North Carolina, Stanford, Illinois, Duke\nNo. 2s: Iowa State, Boston College, Michigan State, Kansas\nNo. 3s: Arizona, Syracuse, Florida, Mississippi\nNo. 4s: Notre Dame, Kentucky, Fresno State, Oklahoma