Irish Breakdown

Notre Dame Men's Basketball Upsets Missouri, Hand Tigers First Loss

The Notre Dame men's basketball program handed Missouri its first loss on Tuesday thanks to a late second half rally.
Jared Shlensky|
Dec 2, 2025; South Bend, Indiana, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish guard Cole Certa (5) celebrates making a 3-point shot during the second half at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center. Mandatory Credit: Michael Caterina-Imagn Images
Dec 2, 2025; South Bend, Indiana, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish guard Cole Certa (5) celebrates making a 3-point shot during the second half at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center. Mandatory Credit: Michael Caterina-Imagn Images | Michael Caterina-Imagn Images

In this story:

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Before Tuesday night's ACC/SEC Challenge against Missouri, the Notre Dame Men's Basketball team had won all the games it should have won and lost all the games it probably should have lost. But with a record 5-3, ND knew it needed to upset undefeated Missouri if it wanted to garner the national media's attention.

And for the majority of the night, it looked like the Fighting Irish were going to come up a tad short. But thanks to some big shots from multiple guys in the final three minutes, ND pulled off the upset, defeating the Tigers, 76-71.

And as excited as the players were after the game, no one was more amped up than head coach Micah Shrewsberry. Not only did Coach Shrewsberry display his flashy shoes after the game, but he also had multiple dance moves to go with them.

Some may say ND is way too excited after a regular-season, non-conference win, but I'm not one of them. Notre Dame hasn't finished .500 in each of the last three seasons, and you can even make the argument that this is one biggest wins under Shrewsberry. So, go ahead and celebrate the heck out of this win. After all, it could be the highlight of the season.

But know knows, maybe ND is for real and can make an NCAA tourney push.

I'm not ready to jump on the Fighting Irish bandwagon quite yet, but the Irish definitely have my attention and should be competitive come ACC play. That's something you couldn't say about ND the previous three seasons.

And how about the play of Cole Certa and Markus Burton? They were clutch down the stretch, especially Certa.

Certa hit two of his four three-pointers in the final 95 seconds of the game and continues to be a reliable shooter off the bench for the Irish.

And Burton continues to establish himself as ND's best offensive player. Burton recorded his first career double-double in the win and leads the Irish in scoring with just under 20 points a game (19.9)

Notre Dame has a bit of a cupcake scheduled to close out the nonconference season, but that quickly changes at the end of the month when ND travels to California to play both Stanford and California.

Notre Dame's next game is on Friday against TCU. Tip-off from Schollmaier Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, is at 7 p.m. (ET) and is viewable via ESPN+.

Published
Jared Shlensky
JARED SHLENSKY

Jared Shlensky is a contributing writer for On SI and a freelance play-by-play broadcaster. Jared was previously a sports betting writer for Yardbarker, an On-Air YouTube Personality for the Sports Geek and a minor league play-by-play broadcaster

Home/Basketball