We should probably start with a programming note: Good Things Shrewing is back. Our absence was unintentional—it was not the plan to abruptly cease publishing our men’s basketball-centric Notre Dame content on the very day college basketball started—but everyone is ok. The Barking Crow ran into some rough growing pains this college football season, and Good Things Shrewing was a temporary casualty. We’re back, and as expected, the men’s basketball team is really, really bad.
We’re far from the nadir. Things were briefly much worse. But the team rallied from its low point, and that in itself is a sort of first notch in the belt for Micah Shrewsberry’s South Bend tenure. It would have been very easy after that game against The Citadel, and even before then, for a young and an entirely overmatched ACC team to fold. The team did not fold. They responded to criticism that was at least publicly harsh, they escaped Marist that Friday night, and they came back from Christmas ready to upset a bad Virginia team.
Virginia, as we just said, is bad, and beating them and then finally winning a road game is not a terrific pair of accomplishments. As happened with J.R. Konieczny’s defeat of Oklahoma State in November, the win has aged poorly. But we said at some point that if this could be one of those 13–18 high-major teams in Shrewsberry’s first year, the season would probably be a successful one. If the Irish continue their .333 ACC pace, they will finish somewhere around that mark. It would be a slight overperformance relative to reasonable expectations, and we are lucky to be an ACC school (the league’s bottom is deep and bad), but we are not in the midst of a hideous season. If we can keep it that way, it’ll be a second notch in Shrewsberry’s belt.
The most encouraging part of the recent rally has been how much of it has come from the defense. The morning after that loss against The Citadel, we were 104th in the nation in kenpom’s adjusted defensive efficiency. As I write this, with a few of today’s games decided, we’re checking in at 48th. That’s better than either of Shrewsberry’s Penn State defenses were. In basketball, defense is much less reflective of talent than offense. It’s a product of athleticism, effort, intelligence, motivation, and scheme. We don’t have offensive talent, though the hope remains that this is something this roster will develop. We have those other things, and an easy interpretation of the recovery is that it was sparked with rededicated effort. In short: The players were persuaded to make a good choice.
Thoughts on the rotation, player by player:
- Markus Burton: This poor child is being asked to do far too much but is answering the request admirably and doesn’t seem crushed by the nights when it goes poorly. He produces some remarkable possessions and is as scrappy as we could ask him to be. It’s easy to see him getting better, too, as his career goes on, and ideally becoming one of those special college point guards. Markus Burton is beloved already, and he should only get better with age.
- J.R. Konieczny: The biggest positive surprise so far this year, Konieczny has been a much better asset than I at least expected. I was very wrong about J.R. Konieczny. He’s been looking rattled lately at times—I think it was the NC State meltdown where this was the biggest problem—but he’s a solid complimentary piece and it’s easy to see him improving these next couple years at the same pace the team improves.
- Kebba Njie: There isn’t much happening here offensively, but Njie has been solid on the defensive end. Using EvanMiya’s performance ratings, Notre Dame has been best defensively this year when Njie has been on the floor. It’s not all that visible (the guy isn’t Hasheem Thabeet), but like the others so far, he’s a good piece and it’s easy to expect more growth.
- Tae Davis: Hopefully Davis comes back quickly and wholly from the sprained ankle, especially coming off that double-double against Georgia Tech. Davis is enough. He’s reliable enough, talented enough, etc. A fine role player for this team.
- Julian Roper: Roper might be the only player on this roster who doesn’t look all that likely to grow in his effectiveness, but his veteran presence was welcome on the floor in the early season, doing things like getting in the face of opponents who committed hard fouls on Burton. We’ve got nothing but love for Roper, though he’s been less effective since returning from his injury.
- Braeden Shrewsberry: Shrewsberry the Younger is the tough one. It is a giant relief that he played so well against Georgia Tech and that he’s played so well lately overall, because at the low point, he was the biggest problem on the roster. His shot is ugly, which is jarring given he’s the son of an offensive-minded coach. He seems to relish taking the shot on broken plays, which doesn’t have to be a problem but becomes one when the play isn’t actually broken. At his worst moments, his presence on the floor was a concerning reflection on his dad. Thankfully, we’ve seen the upside now, and it’s making more sense why he was a 3-star and not a more lowly-regarded recruit. In the right role, he could be a solid piece, but I do suspect we’re going to have to worry for a the next three and a half years about him trying to do too much. Ideally, his shot selection improves alongside his shooting, whether his mechanics change or not. It would be great for all parties for Braeden Shrewsberry to be an effective contributor on the floor.
- Carey Booth: Booth is comedic to watch and continues to perfectly hit his original scouting report, which held that he was highly gifted but still figuring out how his body works. Booth is an adolescent tiger, but he’s good enough right now to never be a burden and his potential remains sky-high. One stat from kenpom: Booth has the highest rebounding rate on the team. That often points to strong effort, which is somewhere players as gifted as Booth rarely get the deserved credit.
- Logan Imes: Imes hasn’t been great overall, but he’s not bad enough to inspire groans (even internal ones) when he comes on the floor. He’s kind of the replacement-level player on this roster. He’s rarely an active negative but rarely an active positive. As long as he can stay out of panic mode, he’s a fine player right now, and while he isn’t as easy to see developing strongly as Burton, Booth, Njie, or even Davis, plenty of stranger development stories have worked out within the Notre Dame men’s basketball program.
- Matt Zona: Zona came to college basketball about 15 years too late. He would have been a fun backup 4 around 2008. The biggest issue with Zona right now is that he only naturally subs for Njie within the schemes Notre Dame runs, and so when he’s inserted for Njie the defense gets a lot worse, which makes him a net negative even though he tends to have a positive effect on the offense. Just as EvanMiya has the team best defensively when Njie is on the floor, it says we’re best offensively when Zona’s out there, which again probably ties back to less visible things, mostly Zona being a respectable facilitator on a team no one would describe as offensively facile. I personally like Zona a lot and wonder if we’re going to see a lot of offense/defense subbing between him and Njie as we get into the stretch run. I am also content with his current role.
Overall? We never thought this team could make the NIT, let alone challenge for the bubble. Finishing with fewer than 20 losses, including the inevitable one in the ACC Tournament, is probably a reasonable topline goal. We won a road game. We beat a team who should have an NIT floor. The long-term potential is there on the roster, the upside remains enormous with Shrewsberry as a coach, Shrewsberry continues to be likeable, and recruiting is solid (we’ve got the 24th-ranked 2024 class right now on 247). Compared to initial expectations when we hired Shrewsberry, things are a little behind where we’d want them to be, but for Mike Brey’s strengths, Brey left the cupboard barer than bare. Given what we know about Notre Dame’s athletic department, it’s hard to knock Shrewsberry for this team being as bad as it is. It could be a lot worse (see: Louisville), and it still seems likely to get a lot better (see: last year’s Penn State).
If Michigan Can Win One…
Moving to football:
Ouch.
For the last ten years or so, after settling in and patching up all the holes Eddie Lacy’s cleats left in our psyche and our souls, a comforting piece of Notre Dame’s inability to break deep into the top five nationally was that we simply couldn’t recruit at the level of schools like Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and LSU. It stunk, but it made sense. We were not as big or strong or fast as other teams. In football, that matters. Even when Clemson broke into that special circle, we could be at ease about the reasoning through our first-hand encounter with the oddity that was their strength program. Besides Clemson? Nobody won without elite recruiting. Until Michigan.
To be fair, Michigan was helped by Covid. We don’t need to accuse Connor Stalions of being behind the possible lab leak to acknowledge that Michigan benefited from getting a few chances to figure it out before this sensational wave of offensive line play ran out of eligibility. But the fact it worked—the fact Michigan was able to finally break through—is an indictment of Notre Dame’s performance as a football program these last 25 years. If Michigan can win one, we should be able to win one. All the credit in the world to Jim Harbaugh and the rest of them, but if building a dominant offensive line and developing a great defense can result in a national championship, well…we should have figured out how to do those things to that degree as well. A Midwestern school with some semblance of academic standards just won a national championship. We don’t have an excuse.
It’s fair to point out that Georgia’s loss to Alabama probably meant the second-best SEC team was in the field, and it’s fair to point out that all three of Georgia, Alabama, and LSU were not their best selves this year, and it’s fair to point out that Ryan Day is a little bit of a dummy when it comes to in-game decision-making. But Ryan Day beat us too (we outdumbed him), and Michigan still got itself in the position to capitalize off those letdown seasons from the SEC’s best. Also? Michigan would have been favored by as many as six points against Georgia in the finale. Michigan was the best team in the country, and the margin wasn’t miniscule.
Looking at our own season: It was a good step forward. We were not the national championship-caliber team we hoped to be, and all three losses left a bitter, could–have–won–that taste, but even beyond the measure where ten wins is more than nine, things went better than they went in 2023. Game management improved. We challenged one of the most talented teams in the country in the form of Ohio State. We got back on top of the rivalry with USC and got to be the first blow of the wrecking ball which ripped through their recklessly hyped season. Our depth was sufficient to completely blow out Oregon State’s depth in a fun bowl game. Al Golden’s defense was awesome. I don’t know which loss hurts worst—each makes a compelling case—and it would be nice to have better wins than those over USC, NC State, and Oregon State’s B-Team, but it’s not outlandish to think this could be the new floor. If it is, we’re in a comparable place to where we were under Brian Kelly. Add in the possibility that the 12-team playoff makes college football a little more random (the best team in the country should win the national championship less often in this new format, opening the door for teams who are not the best team in the country—i.e., Notre Dame), and through the transition that was foisted upon us, we have improved our national championship chances while also growing to like ourselves more. The risk of cratering is still higher than it was in the late Kelly years, but Notre Dame is arguably in the best spot it’s been since the days of Lou Holtz.
The offseason has gone well so far, too. Chansi Stuckey’s dismissal was odd and a little awkward, but we’ve done just fine building a wide receiver room in his wake. Our recruiting class still isn’t great, but we didn’t suffer an embarrassing signing day. Xavier Watts is returning next year. Troy bailed us out of the Gerad Parker situation and we got one of the most highly-regarded offensive coordinators in the game to replace him while also weakening a fellow top-15 program. Things are good. But. Two areas of concern:
First, recruiting. While Freeman spoke highly of FUND on Signing Day, it’s still unclear that FUND is actually a competitive NIL collective. The program brought in a comparable class to those of the Brian Kelly era despite Marcus Freeman’s greatest strength reputedly being his ability to recruit. We are employing a better recruiter and achieving similar results, and this has happened at the same time NIL has become a factor.
There are two hopeful explanations here. The first is that Freeman and the staff may have lowered their sights this season, dodging recruits they feared would host a bidding war down the stretch. We wrote about this possibility and others in July. It’s possible the staff recalibrated too low, and that FUND has stepped it up, and that we’ll start seeing more five-stars next year. The second is that FUND might not be a finished product, and that the real purpose of Freeman praising its performance was to encourage folks like you and I to support it (especially when you and I get rich). FUND might get there. Right now, though, Notre Dame is failing to compete with the best nationally when it comes to recruiting, and while Michigan has similar struggles and just won a national championship, Michigan is still an unusual case.
Second, quarterback. This website tends to subscribe to the idea that the quarterback position is less important in college football than it is in the pros, and it’s encouraging that there are human beings out there with some knowledge in the subject area who believe Riley Leonard might one day play in the NFL. But Riley Leonard was not as successful in the ACC as Sam Hartman was, and Hartman, as much as we loved him, was a little disappointing once he got out of the fifth-best Power Five conference. It’s not clear that Leonard is a better option at quarterback than Steve Angeli.
There are upsides here, among them that Leonard is less a finished product than Hartman was and that Leonard and Angeli might have complimentary skillsets. Again, the quarterback position is different in college than it is in the NFL. Two-QB systems aren’t the worst thing in the world, especially if you have one of the best offensive coordinators in the country (which we think we do with Mike Denbrock). But it’s possible we passed on some talent in order to divert NIL dollars to a quarterback who might find his way into some sort of platoon next year. We aren’t giving ourselves recruiting resources on par with Georgia. We have to think on the margin. Someone bring economics professor Kevin Donovan back from Yale to talk to Brady Quinn.
Overall? The program is in a good place and it is also entirely unreasonable to think we could win a national championship next year. There’s no game on the schedule we shouldn’t win. If we take care of business every week, we will be the 5-seed in the playoff (unless it’s changed and I haven’t heard, the format doesn’t allow us to earn a bye, a deal we were glad to accept because we’ll get to play someone like Liberty in the opener and the Big 12 or ACC champion in the quarterfinals). A reasonable goal is to make the new playoff’s semifinals and hope like hell we get a good draw. We’ve got a long offseason ahead to keep that the case.
Quick(er) Hitters
For those wondering, the football program’s 2025 recruiting class is not the best in the country. It’s only ranked 1st because we get our commits earlier than the big boys get theirs. In average recruit rating, we’re 13th. A few of the programs ahead of us are there through quirks (I don’t expect TCU to outrecruit us), but we’re still only drawing a top-ten recruiting class, so don’t be surprised if the ranking backslides later this year. If we don’t like that, we need to go buy ourselves some 5-stars.
One programming note: We’re going to try flipping between Mondays and Fridays for when we publish these going forward, which basically means that if we miss a Monday, we’ll publish on Friday. We’re going to keep aiming for Mondays, but something we learned during football season is that there is a limit on how much content we can turn around between Saturday and Monday. If a different long-term solution becomes necessary, we’ll find it, but Mondays and occasional Fridays are the new goal.
Roundup
Sport by sport, for those in season:
The men’s basketball team visits Boston College tonight and then gets the weekend off. Boston College is better than we are, so it’s one of those games where we’re looking for a clean performance. Winning would be fun (and we should dedicate ourselves to bullying Boston College more, as an institution), but we’re definitely the underdog. Using kenpom, this ranks ninth out of our remaining 15 games in terms of win probability, accounting for the ACC Tournament. I haven’t seen any reports, but I’d imagine Tae Davis isn’t back from his sprained ankle just yet, which probably works its way down to us needing a good night from Logan Imes?
(Update: We didn’t get this published before the game started. Tae Davis is back!)
For newer readers, we don’t focus heavily on women’s basketball here not because we aren’t proud of Notre Dame’s women’s basketball program, but because we don’t know shit about women’s basketball. For instance: I really don’t know whether Olivia Miles might come back this year. I have no idea. I don’t even know if anybody else knows. We will celebrate women’s basketball in this space but until we know it better, we don’t have a lot to contribute.
That said, Hannah Hidalgo is electric and Niele Ivey seems to be doing heroic work keeping this team as good as it is with so many players down at all times. It’s been great to see Sonia Citron back, and the team swatting Miami away like a fly yesterday was refreshing to watch after the men’s team kind of stunk against FSU on Saturday. We’ve got Virginia on Thursday and Wake Forest on Sunday, and neither of those teams has won an ACC game, but both contests are on the road. (Also? Muffet McGraw’s statue unveiling was the best moment in Notre Dame athletics in the last year. We celebrate women’s basketball but we merely tolerate men’s lacrosse.)
The hockey team isn’t great again, .500 overall and a little below that in the Big Ten. We’re on the edge of being ranked, but the poll goes 20 teams deep and we probably need to be in the top 15 to make the NCAA Tournament, if not the top twelve. We just gave Ohio State its first Big Ten win of the season. Penn State comes to town this weekend, and they’re in a similar position to us in the national perception but they’ve been worse in conference play. We tied them twice in State College and split the shootouts. Sweeping the series should be doable, and would be good.
There hasn’t been much ND tennis news since we last did this, but the season’s firing up now. The men’s team swept IUPUI twice last week and plays Wisconsin on the road on Sunday. The women’s team hosts Iowa and Columbia on Saturday. Neither Notre Dame team is ranked in the ITA rankings, but Sebastian Dominko was 65th in men’s singles in November and two of our women’s doubles pairs were in the top 60.
The track and field teams host the Notre Dame Invitational this weekend. There hasn’t been much of note in that sport so far. Indoor season is still firing up.
The swim and dive teams are off this week after hosting Princeton and Navy last weekend. The men swept the pair, but the women split. The men’s team was 12th in December’s Coaches Poll. The women are unranked.
The fencing teams will be in New York and Philadelphia this weekend for invites hosted by St. John’s and Penn. The men’s team was ranked 1st in the preseason poll out of the 23 schools with Division I men’s fencing. The women’s team was ranked 2nd out of 28.
For those out of season:
It was sad to see the men’s soccer team lose in the national title game, especially having been better than Clemson over the course of the year. Still, hard to complain about a trip to the national championship. I’m mostly mad because men’s soccer would have been a nicer place to hang our hat than fencing or men’s lacrosse, both of which have so little competition.
Memphis might have been an unreasonably tough draw for the women’s soccer team in the second round, but eventually, you have to win, and bad draw or not, Notre Dame went down a little early. Great year, great program. This is true of all Notre Dame soccer right now.
The women’s cross country team finished 4th at nationals, with Olivia Markezich finishing 3rd as an individual. The men’s team was 14th. Unless I’m really forgetting some recent success, these were great results for these programs.
The volleyball team was bad again (12th out of the 15 ACC schools), but they did at least win on Senior Night. We need to figure out volleyball. It’s going to be too significant of a sport in a few years for us to so consistently be bad at it.
Overall, Notre Dame checks in at fourth in the Directors’ Cup standings after fall sports have been deemed complete, trailing only UNC, Stanford, and Texas. If the women’s soccer team had beaten Memphis or the men’s cross country team had finished 13th instead of 14th, we would have been ahead of Texas. Not a bad athletic department. (Winter sports are going to be much worse.)
