What was different this summer about the Notre Dame men's basketball team? It was obvious

SOUTH BEND — One possession.

That’s all it took one day this summer in Rolfs Hall for Notre Dame men’s basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry and his squad to see that it all might look and feel and sound different this season.

Last year, Shrewsberry’s first, the Irish made it look and feel and sound so darn difficult. Everything that should’ve been so simple, especially on the offensive end, wasn’t. It was a chore for the Irish to recognize even the most basic of concepts. That’s what happens when you throw together a new coach, a new staff, a new philosophy and too many new guys and try to swim in the waters of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

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There was too little time to stop or teach or learn as Notre Dame went 13-20 overall, 7-13 and tied for 12^th in the ACC. The Irish did it all on the fly just to tread water. It shifted this summer for Notre Dame. One afternoon in Rolfs, the Irish were in the halfcourt on the offensive end when a switch left sophomore point guard Markus Burton with an obvious mismatch to exploit.

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A plethora of opportunities beckoned Burton. He could put his defender on skates and get to the bucket. He could probe and kick to a teammate for an open 3 when the obvious double team arrived. He could pull up with his lethal midrange jumper.

He could be a basketball player.

What he couldn’t do was do what he did too many times last season — nothing. Just wait for someone to bring a ball screen. As Burton assessed the situation, with a ball screen set to arrive, he barked out one word.

No!

That said everything.

“Just little things like that as a group that we didn’t see at all last year,” Shrewsberry said. “Those are things that you see the progress that’s being made. You see encouraging things or things that we’ve talked about that they didn’t quite see.”

They didn’t see them last year for myriad reasons. Everything was moving so freaking fast that it was difficult to decipher. New coach, new team, new program, new everything. These guys didn’t know basketball, in part, because they didn’t know one another. They were just a group of guys thrown together and asked to compete. They were like 10 guys, 10 Ubers. Ten guys who wanted to go the same direction, but who often went separate ways. They didn’t know how to be a team.

That changed the first night the Irish were on campus for summer school in June as they gathered at the off-campus apartment of senior swingman Julian Roper to watch the NBA finals. That night and the days and nights that followed were about building a bond off the court so they could have something on the court that they didn’t always have last season.

Trust.

“I told them at the end of practice, we’ll be a really good team when we trust each other, whether it’s 40 minutes on the clock or one minute on the clock,” Shrewsberry said. “We have to trust each other the same exact way the entire game.

“We’re still not there yet, but we’re waaaay closer. We’re way better than we were last year, but we also have a lot more pieces, too. Like, I can trust the dude next to me because he’s a good player and the guy next to him is a good player.”

Last year’s roster was a collection of too many young guys who hadn’t done it at the ACC level and too few old guys who also hadn’t done it at the ACC level. There’s a better balance. Notre Dame returns seven scholarship players to a roster last season that returned only three. Burton and starting backcourt mate Braeden Shrewsberry are sophomores. Seasoned veterans in college basketball. Same for Tae Davis. And Kebba Njie. And Roper and J.R. Konieczny.

Last summer, they didn’t know what they didn’t know. Now they know.

Graduate transfers Matt Allocco (Princeton) and Nikita Konstantynovskyi (Monmouth) bring a veteran presence and, maybe most importantly, respected voices to an often-quiet group. They talk and everyone listens.

There are pieces there now that weren’t there then.

“When I come out to practice and I look across from me at the other guy, there’s a real basketball player,” Coach Shrewsberry said.

Burton also sees it.

“The talent level is way higher than it was last year,” he said. “The competition level is very high every day at practice, so it’s a better look from last year to now. We come in and fight every single day.”

And, as silly as it sounds, they also score. Easier than last year when Notre Dame averaged an anemic 64.0 points per game. That ranked second to last (14^th) in the league and 342nd (out of 351 teams) nationally. Burton sees the pieces and the plan and knows even before the Irish play a regular-season game that those 22 games they played last year when they failed to score at least 70 points might be a memory.

“I feel like this year is going to be a lot easier getting to 70, 80 (points),” he said. “We might get to 90 due to the fact that we have so much talent. We have a lot of weapons. We can do a lot of different things.”

Like that day in Rolfs. There’s still a long way to go this fall and winter, but the Irish have already come a long way from last spring. Everything has a chance to be different, a chance to be better.

They see it.

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on Twitter: @tnoieNDI. Contact: (574) 235-6153.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: What does 2024-25 hold for the Notre Dame men's basketball team?