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player ready...His team won the unwinnable game Monday night, his players deliriously galloping around Pittsburgh’s floor and then high-fiving the athletic director on their way off it. As the din subsided, Notre Dame coach Mike Brey found Dan Gavitt, a Big East associate commissioner, and posed a suddenly vital question.
“That still only counts as one?” Brey asked.
Recalling that moment, the Irish coach chuckled, but this is no laughing matter anymore. A 56-51 defeat of the gobsmacked No. 2 Panthers counts much more than one. The best team in Brey’s 11 years authored the best victory of his tenure and now it has the chance to change the narrative of a program.
Seldom does Notre Dame publicly own expectations of championships or, really, even second-weekend NCAA tournament runs. But after beating a team that had won 61 of 71 league games at home, the Irish officially can beat most anyone. The path to favorable positioning for March is uncluttered. It’s time for a bar reexamination.
“I’m realistic where we are after being here 11 years, we dream about busting through,” Brey said. “Certainly this group, what they’ve done the end of last year and this year — they can almost chart a course for you to get into that territory. But the farthest I’ve gone is, ‘What would it be like to cut those nets down in the Garden?'”
Before fantasizing about Big East tournament titles in Madison Square Garden, it’s healthy to remember the Irish looked atrocious in three previous road games. The margin for error remains tissue-thin.
But Notre Dame now has beaten three top 10 teams. It can go a long way, apparently, with its perceived shortcomings.
If there is a frustration with Brey, it’s his reluctance to talk titles and Sweet 16 berths and embrace those pressures. It smacks, at times, of self-preservation. He argues it is self-correction; early in his Notre Dame tenure, he hung a picture of a Final Four site and then watched his team slog to the NIT.
“I never want to get ahead of ourselves here,” Brey said. “I think we’re always pushing through and trying to get to a position where you can think like that.”
If the Irish stumble over a stretch in which they will be favored in at least six of the next seven games, they again won’t have to bother.
But when Notre Dame cut down the nets after winning November’s Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Brey lobbed into the air the idea of repeating the ritual at the Big East tournament, letting it float alluringly through the locker room.
“What I’ve told this group after watching them in Orlando: I don’t think I’m out of bounds saying let’s dream really big dreams,” Brey said.
It’s now fair to expect the Irish to follow through on them, too.