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SOUTH BEND – Everything about what this season might be and could be and maybe should be for Notre Dame basketball begins with the end of last season.
What Next?: This is the recruiting challenge that Notre Dame basketball now faces
For 18 years as a member of the Big East, then the first 12 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Notre Dame basketball could count on a week at the league tournament as a time to start over or slingshot its way into the NCAA Tournament.
Irish in the Pros: Catching up with former Notre Dame basketball players around the world
In midtown Manhattan. On Tobacco Road. In the nation’s capital. The league tournament often gave the Irish a second life. Winning and losing often didn’t matter as much as just getting the chance to be together for another week. Then last season happened. Last March happened. The end of the regular season at perennial repeat league opponent Boston College happened.
The final buzzer had barely stopped buzzing at Conte Forum when the realization arrived that for the first time in program history, for the first time since those dark days as an independent, there would be no league tournament.
Notre Dame wasn’t good enough. Like that, a season that saw it go 13-18 overall and 4-14 in the ACC was over. That didn’t sit well in the Irish locker room or on the flight home. Even when a season’s not going right, nobody wants it to end early. End that early.
For a program that was a Bonzie Colson sprained ankle away from winning a second ACC Tournament in three years, not even a decade ago, that’s unacceptable.
“It was wild,” said sophomore power forward Brady Koehler. “Losing that game, immediately you know, it’s over.”
“It’s an awful feeling,” said senior guard Braeden Shrewsberry. “That was embarrassing. You never want to feel like that again in your life. It was a bad feeling, but it also motivated you to get back in the guy and get better and get better as a team.
“We can’t let that happen again.”
On Wednesday, July 8, after an offseason conditioning session that included a few jabs and upper cuts in the boxing ring across the way in the Joyce Center, the remaining holdovers from that squad discussed for the for first time missing the ACC Tournament for the first time.
If they have anything to say about it this season, also the last. This year, like a year ago, the league’s bottom three teams – Nos. 16, 17, and 18 in the standings after 18 league games – will not be invited back to Greensboro in early March.
There’s your motto for 2026-27 – Just Get to Greensboro. Put it in the locker room, in the team room, on the wall of the practice court at Rolfs Hall. In the coaches’ meeting room. Everywhere.
Get to Greensboro.
Don’t expect Notre Dame to be one of those forgotten three, no matter what many preseason prognostications will predict. Like every Division I team, this Notre Dame has a specific set of goals outlined for 2026-27. It wants to do this. It believes it can be that.
Somewhere, maybe high on however deep the Irish list goes, one goal should be – must be – getting back to the ACC Tournament, where it won its opening game in each of the previous two league tourneys.
“You could lose every ACC game (in the past), but it’s a whole new season when you get to the ACC Tournament,” said senior guard Logan Imes. “When it ended, it didn’t feel right.”
What made it worse then was that it was spring break. As soon as Notre Dame returned to campus, it was closed. Imes found somewhere else to be. Nobody around? No chance of sticking around. He went and reconnected with friends elsewhere.
“How often do you get a week off?” Imes said.
Many believe Notre Dame will be in a similar spot next spring – too much time on its hands and no games to get to. Don’t believe in the Irish? Don’t trust the Irish? That’s fair. They know they didn’t do much last season to earn trust in this one. But a new year brings new optimism. You know those proverbial chips on the shoulders of players, of veteran players?
Those chips, those shoulders, those veterans, are everywhere around Rolfs Hall these days. That’s good. That’s needed.
Whether anyone on the outside wants to embrace it or not, there’s a different vibe about Notre Dame basketball. The Irish are older. They’re driven. They believe in themselves and what they can do, even if too few don’t believe in any of it. In them.
“That hunger can take you a long way,” Shrewsberry said. “It’s not always about talent or athleticism; it’s about who wants it more. We have a lot of guys who want to prove themselves and win badly.
“It’s a different feeling around here, for sure.”
One that must carry into the second week of March.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: How last season ended cannot ever happen again to Notre Dame basketball
Continue reading...
What Next?: This is the recruiting challenge that Notre Dame basketball now faces
For 18 years as a member of the Big East, then the first 12 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Notre Dame basketball could count on a week at the league tournament as a time to start over or slingshot its way into the NCAA Tournament.
Irish in the Pros: Catching up with former Notre Dame basketball players around the world
In midtown Manhattan. On Tobacco Road. In the nation’s capital. The league tournament often gave the Irish a second life. Winning and losing often didn’t matter as much as just getting the chance to be together for another week. Then last season happened. Last March happened. The end of the regular season at perennial repeat league opponent Boston College happened.
The final buzzer had barely stopped buzzing at Conte Forum when the realization arrived that for the first time in program history, for the first time since those dark days as an independent, there would be no league tournament.
Notre Dame wasn’t good enough. Like that, a season that saw it go 13-18 overall and 4-14 in the ACC was over. That didn’t sit well in the Irish locker room or on the flight home. Even when a season’s not going right, nobody wants it to end early. End that early.
For a program that was a Bonzie Colson sprained ankle away from winning a second ACC Tournament in three years, not even a decade ago, that’s unacceptable.
“It was wild,” said sophomore power forward Brady Koehler. “Losing that game, immediately you know, it’s over.”
“It’s an awful feeling,” said senior guard Braeden Shrewsberry. “That was embarrassing. You never want to feel like that again in your life. It was a bad feeling, but it also motivated you to get back in the guy and get better and get better as a team.
“We can’t let that happen again.”
On Wednesday, July 8, after an offseason conditioning session that included a few jabs and upper cuts in the boxing ring across the way in the Joyce Center, the remaining holdovers from that squad discussed for the for first time missing the ACC Tournament for the first time.
If they have anything to say about it this season, also the last. This year, like a year ago, the league’s bottom three teams – Nos. 16, 17, and 18 in the standings after 18 league games – will not be invited back to Greensboro in early March.
There’s your motto for 2026-27 – Just Get to Greensboro. Put it in the locker room, in the team room, on the wall of the practice court at Rolfs Hall. In the coaches’ meeting room. Everywhere.
Get to Greensboro.
Don’t expect Notre Dame to be one of those forgotten three, no matter what many preseason prognostications will predict. Like every Division I team, this Notre Dame has a specific set of goals outlined for 2026-27. It wants to do this. It believes it can be that.
Somewhere, maybe high on however deep the Irish list goes, one goal should be – must be – getting back to the ACC Tournament, where it won its opening game in each of the previous two league tourneys.
“You could lose every ACC game (in the past), but it’s a whole new season when you get to the ACC Tournament,” said senior guard Logan Imes. “When it ended, it didn’t feel right.”
What made it worse then was that it was spring break. As soon as Notre Dame returned to campus, it was closed. Imes found somewhere else to be. Nobody around? No chance of sticking around. He went and reconnected with friends elsewhere.
“How often do you get a week off?” Imes said.
Many believe Notre Dame will be in a similar spot next spring – too much time on its hands and no games to get to. Don’t believe in the Irish? Don’t trust the Irish? That’s fair. They know they didn’t do much last season to earn trust in this one. But a new year brings new optimism. You know those proverbial chips on the shoulders of players, of veteran players?
Those chips, those shoulders, those veterans, are everywhere around Rolfs Hall these days. That’s good. That’s needed.
Whether anyone on the outside wants to embrace it or not, there’s a different vibe about Notre Dame basketball. The Irish are older. They’re driven. They believe in themselves and what they can do, even if too few don’t believe in any of it. In them.
“That hunger can take you a long way,” Shrewsberry said. “It’s not always about talent or athleticism; it’s about who wants it more. We have a lot of guys who want to prove themselves and win badly.
“It’s a different feeling around here, for sure.”
One that must carry into the second week of March.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: How last season ended cannot ever happen again to Notre Dame basketball
Continue reading...
