It resembles a midmajor program, and that is not meant as an insult. It is simply the stark truth about Notre Dame basketball, the harsh reality it faces even as it tries to survive and thrive in the unforgiving Big East.
“It’s exactly how it is,” Irish coach Mike Brey agreed on Monday night.
He was leaning against a wall at Conseco Fieldhouse, where minutes earlier Butler of the Horizon League had closed out its 71-69 win over Brey’s team in an opening-round game of the NIT Season Tip-Off. In the nightcap, Roderick Wilmont’s 24 points led Indiana (1-0) to a 91-66 win over Lafayette (1-1).
Butler (2-0), coming off a 20-win season, had started three seniors, a fourth-year junior and a genuine junior. Brey’s Irish (1-1), coming off a 16-win season, had started two seniors, a junior and two sophomores, and featured two freshmen and two sophomores in their rotation.
“We’ve kind of been four-year guys, and if you hit us at the right time, we’re pretty good,” he continued, and now he was explicating how his program resembles a midmajor. “But we’ve got to wait for our guys to grow up in our program. That’s a little bit of the school, the kind of kids we attract. A guy who wants to hit it for one year and go, two years and go, he’s probably not going to choose us.
“We could use a marquee guy. We’ve got a lot of good players here, guys who can develop. Here’s who we are, really. When you look at our program, our four guys in the NBA (Matt Carroll, Troy Murphy, Pat Garrity, Chris Quinn), none of them was a McDonald’s All-American. Those are the kind of guys we get. The problem is, the league we’re in, the league we signed up for . . . whew, it’s brutal.”
If their performance Monday was any indication, that is also just the kind of season his Irish are doomed to endure. They did hit 58.8 percent of their threes and did get nice efforts from seniors Colin Falls (17 points) and Russell Carter (15) and 6-foot-8-inch freshman Luke Harangody (17 points, 10 rebounds).
But the Irish botched a chance to tie at the end even after taking a timeout to set up a final play, and their defense was porous.
Bulldogs junior point guard Mike Green constantly penetrated that defense and then either finished strong (19 points) or found an open man on the perimeter (12 assists). Junior A.J. Graves buried eight threes on his way to 28 points.
“You had older, experienced guys breaking down younger, inexperienced guys,” Brey said, and those were guys from a league that hardly compares to the Big East, which is full of performers who are future NBA first-round draft choices destined to stay around only a season or two.
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That is why the future is so daunting for Brey, who took the Irish to the NCAA tournament in his first three years at the school and to the NIT in the last three. He has a young team that needs a chance to develop, a fragile team that needs a boost to succeed.
“This would have been huge. I wanted it for our confidence. If we win, we would have celebrated like Butler,” Brey said, but Notre Dame didn’t, and now the task he faces is even harder. He knew that would be the case when he accepted this game, yet he took the risk and must await the consequences.
“I don’t know if I was being fearless or not real smart,” he said of that choice. “When we committed to the NIT a couple years ago, the format was a little different (Notre Dame would have played at home under it). I thought twice about it after the format was changed, but, hey, we made a commitment and I thought with our group, getting thrown into this, let’s see what we’ve got.
“Maybe not the smartest [move]. But I’m hoping we can learn from it, grow up.”
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