In some ways that is Notre Dame at this point. Luke Harangody really does appear to be very unlikely to play on Wednesday.

Feeling better after missing two games to let a bone bruise in his right knee heal, Notre Dame power forward Luke Harangody planned to participate in all 90 minutes of Monday’s basketball practice.

He barely made it through 15 before lingering pain forced him out of a simple halfcourt drill. After consultation with team medical personnel and coach Mike Brey, Harangody has been ruled out for Wednesday’s home game against No. 12 Pittsburgh.

“He kind of stepped out for a few minutes and wanted to come back in,” said Brey, whose team never got to a planned scrimmage with Harangody. “I said, ‘No, that’s it. We’re not going to play games with it.’ “

Well, as they showed in taking Lousiville to OT at Freedom Hall, the Irish can still play. Even more so at the Joyce Center. The Irish really enjoy a big homecourt advantage there — even with a stunning loss to St. John’s. In fact that makes it a little scarier. Only once in the past 4 years has ND dropped two straight at home.

There’s plenty of offensive dangers to worry. Tim Abromaitis — one of the contenders for Big East’s Most Improved Players — is a 6-8 forward who averaging over 17 points per game and nearly 5 rebounds. He also has range — shooting 49% on 3s.

Senior point guard Tory Jackson is a noted worry by Coach Dixon.

One of Pitt’s biggest concerns is Notre Dame senior Tory Jackson, who led the Irish’s come-from-behind, 82-70 victory two years ago in the Panthers’ most recent trip to South Bend, Ind. Jackson, a 5-foot-11 guard, had 16 points and 13 rebounds, as Pitt blew an 11-point second-half lead. The 13 rebounds remains a career-high for Jackson, who will be playing in his 129th game with the Irish. “He’s a different type of point guard,” Dixon said. “He’s physical. He’s strong. He can shoot it. But he does some more things inside … that most point guards don’t do, so he presents a problem in that regard.”

This year Jackson is only averaging 9 ppg, but in the last 4 games he has averaged over 17 ppg.

Trying to fill the gap left by Harangody are two true freshman: Mike Broghammer and the Harangody look-alike, Jack Cooley. (That can’t really be his name.) What they may lack in talent and skill they make up with in having 10 fouls to give — which they used all of trying to stop Samardo Samuels. The two combined in the Louisville game to play 29 minutes, 4 points, 6 rebounds, 2 turnovers, 4 steals, 1 block and 10 fouls. It’s a good thing McGhee is in such good shape now. He’s going to be very bruised by Thursday morning.

So, while McGhee has also looked a lot better defending big men who try to step outside, he probably won’t have to do too much of that against ND.

The question still remains, can ND consistently replace the 24 points and 10 boards Harangody supplies. We can agree that the softness of Harangody on defense won’t be missed, but ND is an offense-only team. They pay lip service to defense but they need to score lots to win. Pitt will need to continue with strong 3-point defense as ND leaned heavily on the 3 even before the Harangody injury.

Pitt of course has offense more diffused.

“That’s something that excites me about our team,” coach Jamie Dixon said. “We ran sets for four or five different guys down the stretch. We really do have balance. I see that happening more. We had Jermaine and Gilbert out early. That was something that was going to develop. We really have five guys. I think it’s something that’s developing and something that can be good for us.”

In the final five minutes of Sunday’s game against Villanova, with Pitt never holding more than a six-point lead, five players scored.

That kind of balance has been evident in recent games. Six times in the past 11 games someone other than Gibbs has led the team in scoring. Four players other than Gibbs stepped up to be the leading scorer in those games.

What I’ve like in the recent winning streak is that the emphasis has stayed with the defense first. Stop the team and then execute the offense.

Back to ND. Irish coach Mike Brey has finally started to feel a little heat for his team. To the point where he got defensive.

“I told someone the other day,” Brey said during a conference call, “the decade before we got here, how many times was the fan base thinking about “bracketology” in mid-February? Once.

“Nine of 10 years, we’ve been in the mix playing for the right things. And I’m very happy about how we do business.”

Brey has guided the Irish to five NCAA tournament berths and four NITs in his nine seasons. This year’s team is a long shot to make the field of 65 after it fell to 17-9 and 6-7 in the Big East following losses to Seton Hall and St. John’s.

Brey said his track record is solid, especially considering how his predecessors fared.

“Where were you? Where were you?” Brey asked about the program before he arrived.

It is never a good sign of how a coach is handling criticism and pressure by pointing out how bad things were and slagging past coaches. It is true that the Irish were generally irrelevant from about the beginning of the 80s to the start of the new millenium. Still, the Irish have essentially been a middling Big East program that have managed to take advantage of unbalanced scheduling a couple times to make the NCAA Tournament.

They have not been a serious team in the Big East. I’m convinced that his two Big East Coach of the Year awards were a conspiracy by other Big East coaches to keep him in his job so they don’t have to worry that ND might get a good coach who understands defense and might be able to really recruit Chicagoland.