Notre Dame has had a familiar face in the men’s basketball program in coach Mike Brey for the last 23 years in South Bend. That will be changing very quickly with the the Irish reportedly hiring the now former men’s basketball coach at Penn State in Micah Shrewsberry to be its new head coach of the program.
The Irish had a disappointing season in 2022-2023 finishing the year at 11-21. This came just one year after Brey and the rest of the staff got Notre Dame back into the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017. They had wins over Rutgers in the First Four matchup, and then an upset win over the 6th seed Alabama in the first round in 2022.
The Nittany Lions are coming off a very successful year in Happy Valley with a record of 23-14. With Shrewsberry at the helm, they made the NCAA Tournament this season drawing a 10 seed. Penn State had a good showing finishing in second place in the Big Ten Tournament as well. It was a pretty impressive showing for Penn State since they came into the Big Ten Tournament as the 10th seed.
In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Penn State beat the 7th seed in Texas A&M by a score of 76-59. Then in the second round, they took the Texas Longhorns down to the wire before coming up short in the round of 32.
It is being reported that Penn State did make their pitch and a lucrative offer for Micah Shrewsberry to stay, but turns out it was too good of an opportunity to return back to his home state of Indiana and coach at the University of Notre Dame.
The 46 year old in Micah Shrewsberry has a lot of coaching experience in state of Indiana under his belt at the moment. He started off his coaching career as a grad assistant at the University of of Indianapolis for one season in 1999-2000. He then went on to be an assistant coach at Wabash, and two following seasons at DePauw which are at the Division III level.
Shrewsberry then went out on his own to be the head coach at Indiana University-South Bend at the NAIA level in 2005. After a few seasons as the head coach of the Titans at IU-South Bend he went back to being an assistant coach under Brad Stevens at Butler. He was an assistant coach on those key Butler Bulldog teams that shocked the college basketball world with their deep runs in March Madness.
After his stop at Butler, Shrewsberry went to another school in Indiana to work under Matt Painter at Purdue in 2011. He only ended up staying at Purdue for the next two seasons before being recruited to come join Stevens coaching staff again. This time though it was not at Butler, but at the NBA level with the Boston Celtics.
He spent 6 seasons with the Celtics under Stevens as as assistant coach before returning back to the college level at Purdue where he was named the associate head coach on Painter’s staff for two seasons. After those two years at Purdue for his second stint there he was introduced at Penn State where again he only stayed for two seasons before coming back to the state of Indiana to now coach at Notre Dame.
The media is saying that it will be a seven year deal for Shrewsberry at Notre Dame with the amount he will be paid unknown at this time.
Micah Shrewsberry will have his hands full to start his coaching career at Notre Dame
The new Irish head coach in Shrewsberry is walking into a Notre Dame job with the cupboard being pretty empty with players at the moment. The Irish six top scorers from this past season are all most likely gone and will not return next season. I say most likely because guard Cormac Ryan still has one year of eligibility left if he wanted to return, but probably will not overall.
At the moment the Irish only have 4 scholarship players returning in 2023-2024. Freshman Ven-Allen Lubin, South Bend native in sophomore J.R. Konieczny, and juniors Tony Sanders Jr. and Matt Zona. Notre Dame does have one current commit in the 2023 class in guard Markus Burton who played his high school ball right down the road from Notre Dame at Penn High School. Whether it be the transfer portal, or other 2023 recruits Shrewsberry will have to put together his staff and hit the recruiting trail soon to fill out the roster.
Notre Dame is down to only 4 scholarship players due to freshman phenom in JJ Starling entering the transfer portal last week alongside fellow freshman Dom Campbell, and graduate student Robby Carmody. Starling has already announced he will be transferring to Syracuse University to play next year. While Campbell and Carmody have not announced their next moves just yet.
Transfer portal has been successful for Micah Shrewsberry
The transfer portal has become a major addition in college basketball these last couple years. To be successful nowadays you have to be able to manage it and really make sure you are diving in there to grab players that you feel would be successful in your system. It should be noted that Shrewsberry has had success when going into the transfer portal on his end multiple times.
He was able to convince Jalen Pickett to come to Penn State to play for him these last two years. Pickett ended up being the leading scorer under Shrewsberry and the Nittany Lions. Plus was a major factor to Penn State getting back to the NCAA Tournament. He was also able to get key players in Camryn Wynter and sharpshooter Andrew Funk out of the portal too.
Brey was able to add a few players in the transfer portal like Ryan from Stanford who was mentioned earlier, former Yale standout in Paul Atkinson, and Trey Wertz from Santa Clara. Something tells me Shrewsberry will be more active in it overall compared to Brey the last few years.
It may be a little bit of a struggle at the start of his tenure at Notre Dame, but give Shrewsberry time to adjust and bring in some of his own players that fit his system and tempo he is going to want to run on the court. Notre Dame had a good one in Brey for the last 23 years. Now they have another good one in Shrewsberry moving forward for hopefully a very long coaching tenure. The future is very bright for Notre Dame basketball with Micah Shrewsberry as the head coach. Credit to Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick for targeting his guy he wanted in Shrewsberry and bringing him to South Bend.
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