Good Things Shrewing: The Class of 2024

The more anxious recruiting attention has been focused, since Micah Shrewsberry’s hiring, on this upcoming season’s roster. It’s up to ten scholarship players now, we’ll talk about the tenth below, it hasn’t exactly been fun to stare at the scholarship chart where Matt Zona and Tony Sanders are the experienced elder statesmen.

The more exciting recruiting attention can be focused on 2024.

2024’s recruiting is in its early stages, with roughly a third of the 247 composite’s top 100 committed and some of those commitments likely to be shed, as happens with commitments in the college recruiting game. Notre Dame has one commitment—Cole Certa, about whom we wrote a few weeks ago—but twelve other players are listed as prospects right now, with contact with three labeled as “warm” on the recruiting encyclopedia that is 247 Sports.

We’re going to talk about those three, and we’re not going to talk much about the other nine except to say that there are two five-stars among those nine, five four-stars, and two three-stars. The median ranking of all thirteen guys—Certa, the three most possible prospects, and the nine for whom ND is at least somewhere in the orbit—is 65^th. That’s the world in which Shrewsberry’s program is currently dipping its toes. The median signing will be worse than that, but that’s not a bad starting point.

The three with Notre Dame in highest consideration are Sir Mohammed, Travis Perry, and Daquan Davis. Mohammed, ranked 60^th by the composite, is a 6’6” wing from Charlotte with five other schools listed as “warm” and an official visit to South Bend reportedly scheduled for June 18^th. Perry, ranked 77^th by the composite, is a 6’2” point guard from Kentucky whom the Crystal Ball has going to Lexington but does have an offer from the Irish from back on May 9^th, with four additional schools labeled “warm.” Davis, ranked 123^rd by the composite, is a 6’1” point guard from Washington, D.C. with Crystal Ball predictions pointing towards Maryland but an offer from May 22^nd from the Irish, a visit reportedly scheduled for next week, and a decision date set for June 25^th, per Joe Tipton. Davis will be deciding between Maryland, Notre Dame, Mississippi State, and Providence.

It’s possible Notre Dame will land none of these guys, and that we’re focusing on the wrong ones, but these are the closest possibilities at the moment, and for those rightfully tempted to look ahead to 2024–25, they’re a big deal. This year—more on this below—might be rough. The year after is the one where the hope starts. The cupboard was just so empty.

More than anything, I’m personally focused on the numbers. The guys are exciting, but I’m not a recruiting expert. I don’t know who the right guys are. What I’m really hoping is that this 2024 class will eventually number four or more in its totality. Because of transfer admissions being what they are, it’s always going to be tough to refill South Bend through the portal relative to what other schools can do. Rising sophomores seem to be possibilities, grad transfers seem to be possibilities, that seems to be it aside from very special circumstances. You can’t reliably count on impact transfers. Not yet. You need incoming freshmen in South Bend to feel secure.

If the 2024 class gets to four players, that puts 14 scholarships theoretically counted for against a maximum of 13. I don’t have anything against Zona or Sanders or J.R. Konieczny, the three holdovers from the Mike Brey era, but if they weren’t contributing on this year’s team, they either need to get a lot better or Notre Dame needs to flush them out. Getting up to four signings would imply at least one will get pushed out, with Zona and Sanders eligible for fifth years of eligibility that 2024–25 season.

Quick Hitters

Basketball:

• The latest addition to the 2023–24 roster is Tae Davis, an EvanMiya four-star transfer who brings three years of eligibility with him from Seton Hall. Davis, 6’9” but only listed at 204 pounds, played in all but one game for the Pirates this season, standing somewhere between 7^th and 9^th in the rotation and grading out as the team’s eighth-best player on EvanMiya. Even with Davis, Notre Dame is ranked 208^th in the country by Bart Torvik’s system, with four freshmen, three sophomores, Julian Roper, and the Sanders/Zona combo on scholarship. Davis’s signing came out of virtually nowhere buzz-wise, which is a positive sign for other potential signings, but as we’ve been saying: There aren’t many high-impact transfers left available. This first year might be rough.
• Certa, whom we mentioned above, is transferring high schools, set to play at IMG Academy this year rather than Bloomington Central Catholic back in Illinois. It’s probably not a terribly important development, but IMG does tend to compete at a high level, which shouldn’t hurt Certa’s development and speaks highly of his abilities.
• The season will reportedly begin five months for today for the Irish, in South Bend against Niagara.
• Monty Williams got the Pistons job.
• Ryan Owens has been hired as an assistant coach, bringing the staff to eight guys deep: Shrewsberry, Kyle Getter, Mike Farrelly, Owens, Tre Whitted, Grady Eifert, Brian Snow, and Pat Rogers—the lone holdover from the Brey era. This probably isn’t the eventual full list, but it’s most of who we’ll see, and it’s a lot of last year’s Penn State bench.
• Shrewsberry will help out in Colorado Springs next week at the USMNT U19 World Cup tryouts, giving him some face time with top talent.

Football:

• Notre Dame landed Kedren Young, Styles Prescod, and Sean Sevillano Jr. in the class of 2024, bringing the class ranking up to third in the country, though that will drop as other schools catch up in numbers (Notre Dame currently has the most commitments in the country, which isn’t a bad thing but is much more a quirk of timing than a mark of quality). Young is a four-star running back from East Texas, Prescod is a three-star tackle from Fishers, and Sevillano is a three-star defensive tackle from Florida.
• Todd Lyght, a defensive back on the 1988 team, an All-American in both 1989 and 1990, and the defensive backs coach from 2015 through 2019, is on the 2024 College Football Hall of Fame Ballot.

Elsewhere:

• In a rebuke to transfer talk, the swimming and diving team is adding seven athletes through the portal—five men, two women. Six are grad transfers, so…that’s what’s going on. But! It’s happening. They’re also pretty good? I wouldn’t mind a great swimming and diving team. The men’s team was 18^th in the country last year at the national championships. The women did not score. 40 women’s programs scored.
• The women’s lacrosse team is on its international trip, scrimmaging in Athens.

This Week

The men’s lacrosse team did end up winning the national championship after we published last Monday. So that’s good. Always better to win those.

The track and field national championships begin tomorrow here in Austin. Here’s the full list of Irish qualifiers, with Alaina Brady and Jadin O’Brien added to those who qualified at Regionals by virtue of their regular season scores:

• Olivia Markezich (women’s steeplechase)
• Katie Thronson (women’s steeplechase)
• Carter Solomon (men’s 5K)
• Siona Chisholm (women’s 5K)
• John Keenan (men’s javelin)
• Michael Shoaf (men’s shot put)
• Erin Strzelecki (women’s 10K)
• Madison Schmidt (women’s high jump)
• Tom Seitzer (men’s steeplechase)
• Alaina Brady (Heptathlon)
• Jadin O’Brien (Heptathlon)

Events begin tomorrow at 3:30 PM EDT and run through Saturday night. Most will be streamed on ESPN+, with some sort of broadcast each night on ESPN2.