Maine terrifies Notre Dame, or Why you too should have a man crush on Maine freshman Justin Edwards

Justin Edwards entered the Notre Dame game as the top freshman scorer in the nation (20.2 PPG), so yes, I expected him to be pretty good. But there's no way I expected him to be that good.

For most of the game, Edwards was one of, if not the, best player on the court against Big East talent. At 6'3, he was constantly in the lane, but it wasn't the bullish, single-minded hammering of Gerardo Suero, it was basketball. Something of Tim Ambrose at his best, the 6'3 Canadian hanging in the air just a second longer than anyone else and then doing silly things with the backboard. He has an incredible feel for floaters, how to avoid contact, and when to force the issue.

Maybe I'm just fragile and looking for a rebound after the Siena-Albany game broke my heart, but Edwards looks like a lock to be the next John Holland -- but with more savvy and no delusions about the being a three point shooting prodigy. He leaves his feet quickly, but he showed court awareness to pop it out to the wings when he got stuck -- and even made some very nifty tight passes to inside cutters.

I suppose it's true that other players were on the court, and I'm getting to them eventually, but wow.

Even on defense, on the wing in a 3-2 zone, he proved why he's THIRD in the nation in steal rate... great quickness and jammed up the passing lanes far more than anyone on ND expected. In the critical possession of the game, Maine back down 3 with 2+ left to play, Edwards patted away a pass from the top of the key, but the passer recovered; then after the ball got to the wing, he poked it away, it squired over to a ND player in the corner who found a cutter on the broken play for a layup. Up 5, ND didn't look back -- but Edwards nearly forced 2 turnovers.

And Edwards was only 1 part of what must be the most balanced 3-man punch in the AE: Edwards (Slasher), McLemore (shooter) and post player (Fraser). McLemore had a great game, scoring 25 and having a few acrobatics similar to Edwards and his share of and-1s. They were running a two man game together that absolutely froze ND. If they play off each other with hand-offs and backdoor cuts, the rest of the league can pick their poison.

Notre Dame has a bunch of very tall, relatively skilled and relatively immobile white guys -- and Ali Fraser mauled them in the first half. He scored 17 points, finishing with both hands in the post (far and away the league's most dangerous post player) and hit a number of 18 foot jump shots, which were devastating after he dropped in a few layups. He's the complete package for an AE big man on offense -- with one fatal flaw: fouls. He picked up 3 in the second half in maybe, maybe 3 minutes of game time. He didn't score a point in the second half because he fouled almost instantly. He's an aggressive player who blocks a lot of shots, but he and his wide body just draw too much contact not to prompt whistles. He plays below the rim so there's lot of bumping. However, I was surprised how capable Kilian Cato and Svetoslav Chetinov looked -- togther they had a few lay-ups and a handful that agonizingly lipped out -- they look like they could hold their own against most AE posts.

Bottom line: This team has talent to play with anyone in the league. Obviously defense is a concern, but the efficiency of McLemore and Edwards on the wings, scoring shouldn't be a problem. This team looks like it could have a couple 1st team performers... not even sure Woodward can Woodward himself with if these three learn to play off each others strengths. Hopefully Orono realized what they have, because Edwards is already on the high-major transfer watch.