Irish Basketball: It All Falls Down

Late Sunday night, Notre Dame basketball’s dream season came to a screeching halt. Less than 100 miles from South Bend, the Florida State Seminoles smothered what was normally a well-oiled, high-octane attack and put the kibosh on any fairy tale runs the Irish Faithful had hoped to witness.

It was a surprising loss, but at the same time not really. The Seminoles were a long, deep, and extremely athletic club that played stifling defense. That’s the perfect recipe to knock off Notre Dame, who at its heart is a thin squad with limited athleticism. The majority of Irish fans had been waiting for the shoe to drop on this team since mid-January, but perhaps the boys’ blistering finish to the regular season had made people drop their guards if only for the first weekend of the tournament.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with Notre Dame football and basketball, dropping your guard is not a smart thing to do.

After sputtering at the beginning of January, the Irish began a methodical rise in the polls. Four ranked teams—including #2 Pitt—were among the victims of a 13-1 finish to the regular season. The boys won in every which way—whether it was a dazzling display of offensive firepower or a drag-out, defensive slugfest.

Unlike previous Irish outfits, this squad seemed to be able to adapt to whatever the situation called for and never miss a beat. Anchored by five seniors that played an incredibly smart brand of basketball, Notre Dame passed just about every test that came their way.

While every one of the seven players in Brey’s rotation played key roles in making things run smoothly, there was one guy who made the Irish go: Ben Hansbrough. From the opening tip against Georgia Southern in November until his final foul against UConn in March, Hansbrough was a once-in-a-generation competitor whose effort spurred the Irish to unseen heights.

On offense he was not only a sniper from three-point range, but also a sneakily effective player off the dribble who mastered the art of reading a defender’s hedge on a pick. If the defender hung back he fired a shot off. If the defender hedged effectively, Ben would often run right into his hip and draw a foul. If the defender overplayed the hedge, Ben had a lightning quick behind the back move that split the defense and got him into the lane with a full head of steam. His dissection of the defense in this simple play highlighted just how incredible his basketball IQ really was.

Defense was where he made his presence felt the most though. While he was rarely as athletic as his defensive assignment, Hansbrough never backed away from the challenge of guarding elite players like Kemba Walker. What he lacked in quickness he compensated for with sheer relentlessness and limitless energy. His effort rubbed off on the rest of the team and suddenly a perennially horrendous defense morphed into a reliable and consistent one.

The team fed off not only his effort, but also his cockiness and swagger. This group genuinely believed they could win every game because every time they looked to Ben he wasn’t backing down whether the Irish were playing in Purcell Pavilion, The Petersen Events Center, or Freedom Hall. Ty Nash had sound bites like, “we expect to win every game” and their head coach—usually the first person to try to temper expectations—was embracing the chase for a #1 seed in March.

Week after week the wins piled up, capped with a thrilling triumph at UConn to wrap up the regular season. For the first time since the glory days of Digger Phelps, the Irish found themselves ranked in the top five of both polls.

This couldn’t possibly be right, could it? Could Notre Dame legitimately be one of the best teams in the country and in the hunt not only for a tournament berth, but a Final Four berth? We all started to buy in that even if it wasn’t likely, it certainly wasn’t a far-fetched scenario.

But then something happened March 8th in New York at the Big East Tournament that I believe changed everything: Ben Hansbrough won Player of the Year.

His first game you couldn’t tell a major difference in his demeanor (mainly because the entire Irish team was on fire and Cincinnati was busy rolling over), but against Louisville it became very apparent something changed. He struggled to a 3 of 16 shooting night—far and away his worst shooting night of the year—as Notre Dame blew a big lead and lost in overtime to Louisville. Alarm bells began sounding in my head.

It wasn’t so much the off night of shooting because that happens to everyone, even great shooters. Something about him just looked off, almost as if he hadn’t slept the night before the game. In a word he was lethargic, which was startling since I was convinced he had an endless well of energy. In the first half it didn’t matter because once again his team came out like gangbusters and shot the lights out, but in the second half as the Cardinals closed in the team looked to their leader and he just didn’t have it. Even on the rare occasion he didn’t shoot well during the season he always was able to amp up the team with his energy. Not on that night though.

The result was the Irish crumbled. They couldn’t muster the defensive stops they’d become accustomed to getting over the course of the year and their offense sputtered under Louisville’s pressure. When Notre Dame had the ball on the final possession of regulation, Hansbrough forced up an off-balanced three pointer as opposed to attacking the defense like he normally would. It was a disappointing loss, but in the grand scheme of things not devastating.

His body language suggested that something was wrong, but I couldn’t really pinpoint it. Maybe he was sick, maybe he had a bad night’s sleep, or maybe it was something was weighing on his mind at home—it could’ve been anything. All I know is that he looked different and I hoped that when he arrived in Chicago he’d be well rested and the same Ben he’d been the rest of the year.

The Irish drew Akron in round one and as that game dragged on my observation was the same: something was just off with Ben. His calm, confident swagger that the team fed off had been replaced by a short fuse. It was as if the sudden burden of enormous expectations had overwhelmed him.

Notre Dame squeezed by Akron in an ugly affair and readied itself for Florida State. All I wanted was some early sign that the Ben from two weeks earlier was back. It never came.

In both of Notre Dame’s games in the NCAA tournament he snapped more at teammates, pleaded more with officials, and fired more off-balanced, almost hesitant shots than probably the rest of the year combined. The team seemed frazzled and tight from the get-go and the fact that their keystone was so wound up just exacerbated the problem.

When the Irish went to halftime down 11 I was worried, but still confident we could turn things around. Florida State had played their best half of the entire season and Notre Dame played one of their worst and ND was just 11 points behind. All it would take was a spark.

Then Mike Brey was interviewed coming out of the half and I knew we were in deep trouble.

Brey looked like he was staring a timebomb in the face with no idea how to disarm it. As he muttered about how he was happy to just be down 11 because it felt like 20, it became apparent he was at a complete loss for what was going on with his team. The group of five seniors that was supposed to kill teams with poise and experience was playing like a group of beleaguered underclassmen. Hansbrough, who Brey called “the straw that stirs the drink,” was completely out of sorts both physically and mentally.

We all know what happened next. The final margin was 14 points, but in reality the game wasn’t that close. It was truly painful to watch and the message board vultures immediately swept in to unload on Brey.

They knew it was a fraud all along. Once again lack of depth killed Notre Dame. Once again they fell short of expectations. Once again a poor shooting effort came at the worst possible time. They’re all signs that Brey is still a crappy coach and deserves to be canned.

People are idiots.

Listen, looking back on the season you can’t deem it a great success because Notre Dame once again failed to advance past the first weekend of the tournament. It doesn’t belittle the achievements of the regular season—which were great—but it casts a serious pall over how this year will be viewed in the annals.

Mike Brey shoulders plenty of blame for the Florida State loss because he failed to push the right buttons to refocus and calm down his team. His long-term prospects shouldn't, can’t, and won’t be determined by this single game though. What he does next year will tell us a lot about whether Brey really changed this year or if it was a fluke.

Does the team’s commitment to good defense depart with Hansbrough or will Brey continue to stress it? Will he set the bar high and strive to get back to the heights of this February or immediately try to temper expectations going into next season? Will the influx of talent on its way to South Bend mean he’s about to deepen his rotation a little bit? These are the major questions that will show whether he’s truly adapted and if he continues to adapt. None can be answered right now.

In the meantime we can only reflect on the season that was. I loved watching this team play. Ben Hansbrough became one of my all-time favorite players for all the reasons I’d stated earlier—he almost single-handedly molded the character and ratcheted up the expectations of effort for the entire team. I want to look back on this season fondly and first and foremost remember the team for its exhilarating run through the toughest conference in America. The problem is I won’t, because I can’t.

The wins over Pitt, Wisconsin, Villanova, and UConn are forever relegated to footnote status, the loss to Florida State elevated to bold font in the headline. The enduring lesson smacks both the fans and players in the face: all the great things achieved in the regular season can be washed away in the blink of an eye by wasting an opportunity to do something truly great in March.

Hansbrough...so hot right now...Hansbrough

Saw this posted in The Pit on ND Nation and thought it was worth throwing up on the site. Thanks to Final_Flanner for sharing.

Big East Player of the Year? Certainly deserves to be in the discussion.

So hot right now. Hansbrough.

GO IRISH, BEAT THE HALL!

Revisiting "Breaking Down Mike Brey"

A year ago last week I posted a column titled “Breaking Down Mike Brey.” The Irish were fresh off a trio of heartbreaking losses at the hands of Seton Hall, St. John’s, and Louisville and seemed to be spiraling to another NIT berth. The point of the article was to articulate frustrations with the program and suggest that perhaps the time had come to go in a new direction.

How did Brey and his boys respond over the past year? They unveiled the Burn Offense and promptly reeled off a six-game win streak to go from miles outside the bubble to a #6 seed in last year’s tournament. They’ve been riding that wave of momentum to the tune of a 20-5 record this season, meaning they’ve won 27 of their last 34—including 7 out of 10 against ranked opponents.

Brey has outcoached the likes of Jim Calhoun, Rick Pitino, Bo Ryan, and Jamie Dixon (actually, to say he outcoached Dixon is an understatement—he’s made Jamie his whipping boy three times in ten months). Here we are on the doorstep of March Madness and Brey finds his squad planted firmly in the top ten in both polls.

Accompanying this abrupt turnaround is a slew of questions. Has Mike Brey changed his philosophy since that piece was written? Was the article just flat-out wrong? Did something click with Coach Brey and the result is this new, improved Notre Dame basketball program ready to make “the leap” to the next level? Or is the recent success just a fluke and the Irish will inevitably slip back to flirting with the bubble throughout the season?

I think a good way to try to figure that out would be to dissect last year’s article piece by piece. Last year’s article will be in bold, this year’s reactions will be in normal font and within parentheses. Grab your scalpels and buckle up.

Over the past month the Irish’s somewhat promising season has come undone thanks to crushing defeats at the hands of Rutgers, Seton Hall, St. John’s, and Louisville. The latest trio of losses has led the masses to grab their pitchforks and call for the head of head coach Mike Brey. Other people argue that it is unfair to hold the program to a higher standard than it’s currently attained because it is unrealistic to think any coach could do any better with the hand Brey has been dealt.

(My pitchfork was so sharp, forged with anger over those losses to the trio of NYC metro teams.)

Over the course of ten years Mike Brey has done a lot for the Notre Dame Basketball Program while dealing with some pretty tough restrictions (academics) and sub-standard facilities. Is it time for a change? There’s been a lot of literature out there recently about why Brey is the right fit or at least why he shouldn’t be let go (here’s an article by Lou Somogyi from BGI, one from Mike Coffey from ND Nation, and an entire state of the program from Kevin O’Neill) so I’ll try to present the educated counterpoint.

(All were well-articulated arguments, I just think there were too many excuses offered that concentrated on macro issues. Most of Brey’s flaws are fixable because they’re on a micro scale—using the macro arguments like lack of facilities to excuse not caring about defense makes no sense. It’s very Bob Davie-ish.

Begin Side-rant: YOU FAILED BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T MANAGE A CLOCK BOB, NOT BECAUSE YOU WERE OBLIGATED TO GO TO PEP RALLIES. End Side-rant.)

Brey has an impressive overall record and a rock solid record in the toughest conference in America, but eventually there comes a point when numbers don’t tell the entire story and you can see with your own eyes that a ceiling has been reached. Need an example from another sport? Call up some Philadelphia Eagles fans and get their take on the yearly Donovan McNabb-Andy Reid experience. Brey’s dismissal would have less to do with his body of work and more to do with his basic philosophies and the trends and attitudes that have been entrenched within the program over the course of his tenure.

(I think the Reid-Brey parallel is very apt. Eagles fans are reluctantly nodding as they inadvertently wince.)

We can start with the fact that inadequate attention is given to the simple fundamentals of basketball. I vividly remember Brey talking about the loss of Rob Kurz and what it meant to the team during the ’08-’09 campaign. He said, “Rob did all the little things like screening and we really miss that.” Now Rob Kurz was a great and underrated contributor who was greatly missed last year, but you’re telling me that when he left our ability to set screens left as well? Luke Harangody is 6-7, 250lbs. Tell me why he couldn’t square up, lay his body into someone, and spring one of the bombers we had last year for an open three?

(We’re still not very good at springing out shooters off of screens. There have been times when Atkins is running the point and Ben is playing off the ball where we have serious issues getting Ben the rock in a scoring position. We rely a lot on penetrating and kicking to create jump shot opportunities as opposed to running our shooters off picks which means Ben needs to have the ball in his hands at the start of every meaningful possession.)

Setting screens has nothing to do with talent; it has to do with focus and attention to detail. I realize that the players on the court shoulder some of the blame for not executing, but Brey has a responsibility to call out and hold players who can’t perform simple tasks like setting an effective pick accountable. Watching Zeller and Harangody set lazy, half-hearted screens last year as Kyle McAlarney and Ryan Ayers—guys who made open threes far more often than they missed them—tried to get free last year in half-court sets with limited success made me want to jam my head through a wall.

(Jack Cooley sets a mean screen. How? He stands still and doesn’t roll to the hoop or circle cut to the wing—damnit Zeller—before he’s done setting the pick. To be fair, two of our three best shooters—Carleton Scott and Tim Abromaitis—are spot shooters and not in the McAlarney-Falls-Carroll mold that was comfortable quickly firing a shot after rubbing off a screen. And no one is in the mold of kicking a defender and somehow drawing a four-point play like Falls.)

Attention to detail is an attitude that starts from the top and trickles down and it’s something Mike Brey simply lacks. It manifests itself on the boards as well. Countless times over the past couple years we have allowed offensive rebounds at the most inopportune time. Almost every week of the season it seems an Irish player appears on the wrong side of highlight reel putback dunk. Many times it’s not because we’re outmatched athletically, we just completely fail to turn and box a man out. Just a few weeks ago Rutgers essentially locked up a victory by tipping out a missed free throw in the last two minutes that sucked all the air out of the Irish balloon. That’s the definition of lacking focus.

(This is an area where this team has gotten a lot better. Notre Dame is actually outrebounding opponents by 4.8 boards per game and as of a week ago was one of the top five teams in the Big East in rebounding margin.)

Another more glaring shortcoming of Brey-coached teams is defense. There is absolutely no excuse for how terrible our defense is year in and year out. No, we do not have the elite athletes of other teams in the conference and we can’t expect to have a smothering Pitino-like press in the Big East. Does that mean there’s any defensible reason to be ranked toward the bottom of the entire NCAA in defensive efficiency every season? Absolutely not.

(This is far and away the best defensive squad in Brey’s tenure. They’ve allowed 80 points just one time this season and won that game in double overtime. The Irish gave up 80 points an average of 7+ times per year from 2005-2010.)

Brey has gone on record stating that he’s willing to sacrifice defense to maintain rhythm and flow on the offensive side of the ball. This is a guy who learned under the greatest high school coach ever (Morgan Wooten) and one of the greatest college coaches ever (Mike Krzyzewski). Both are icons in the sport that must cringe every time they hear their old assistant utter his philosophy. It blows my mind that in spite of learning at the foot of these legends and seeing how they operate and approach the game, Brey still takes on an indifferent and borderline dismissive attitude about defense.

(Has Brey changed his tune and realized that playing solid defense is possible and necessary? I’m not ready to completely buy that yet because I think it’s the relentless attitude and demeanor of Ben Hansbrough that has rubbed off on the entire team.

Ben doesn’t have an off-switch. Whether he’s on offense or defense he’s going full-throttle and he’s almost single-handedly raised every player on a veteran team to a higher level of effort on the defensive side of the ball.

While the improved defense may not be a direct result of Brey changing his philosophy, my hope for the future (post-Hansbrough) is that Ben has made Brey realize playing solid defense is absolutely possible despite the fact ND is usually outmanned athletically. It’s all about effort and will.)

One excuse that’s trotted out on behalf of shortcomings on the defensive end is the lack of athletes to employ an effective man-to-man all game long. Defense is not as much about having athletes as it is about effort and attitude. Those that tell you otherwise are wrong. Period. He’s right, we can’t lock down the upper level teams by playing man-to-man all day but that’s no reason to wave a white flag. Why not seek to neutralize the disadvantage we face through alternatives?

(Little did we know the best alternative defense would be an alternative offense.)

The Naval Academy doesn’t line up in traditional sets in football and hope to beat the Notre Dames of the world. They implement a disciplined offense designed to confuse their more talented opponents, shorten the game, and level the playing field as much as possible. Do they win all the time? Absolutely not (please use restraint on your Charlie Weis cracks), but sometimes they find a way (you may now unload on Charlie). The talent gap between Navy football and ND football is far greater than ND basketball and the rest of the Big East.

(Brey’s development and implementation of “The Burn Offense” has been absolutely masterful and forced me to reassess the program's ceiling under his leadership.The Burn levels the playing field by shortening the game and plays to our strengths.

Brey’s teams are routinely one of the most efficient offensive units in the country in terms of points per possession. By limiting the opponent’s opportunities and possessions it’s giving us an edge against teams that have clear athletic and talent advantages. Watching a clearly superior Pitt team get completely frazzled and flustered by The Burn not once, not twice, but THREE times has been a thing of beauty. At the same time, the slower pace also allows the luxury of putting forth more effort and energy on defense, something that’s completely necessary if a team wants to take “the next step” toward being elite.)

What about committing to a 2-3 Matchup Zone? It’s something that nobody—to my knowledge—in the Big East currently employs at least on a consistent basis. It could be a wrinkle to disguise our weaknesses and confuse offenses. Temple almost exclusively used the Matchup under John Chaney and had a great deal of success with it throughout the 90’s. Is it a slam dunk to work? No. Could it be worse than the current state of our defense? No. The unwillingness to address the problem over the course of his ten years is unacceptable. The ceiling for teams that can’t buckle down and make stops at crucial points in the game is very low—it doesn’t matter how vaunted their offense is.

(The matchup zone isn’t even necessary, though I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it implemented in stretches and eventually just replacing the normal 2-3 zone. I’ve always been a big Matchup guy and of the opinion that the traditional 2-3 is a lazy defense unless Jim Boeheim is coaching it.)

Speaking of that explosive offense, let’s dissect that a bit. Much to Brey’s credit his teams are normally chock full of offensive firepower. When things are clicking it is a thing of beauty to watch and the Irish are capable of scoring in bunches that few teams can match. However, inevitably there are times in games where things don’t run like clockwork. Brey’s offensive philosophy is free-flowing, but when it stalls we never seem to have anything to fall back on. This becomes particularly evident down the stretch when games grind to a slower, half-court affair.

(Our problems this year have been based on the fact that we haven’t made shots, not necessarily that the half-court offense has come to a screeching halt. Hansbrough has done a great job making the offense go especially when they’ve used The Burn and getting a shot off in a time-crunched half-court set is a necessity.)

At the end of games instead of drawing up a play it seems Brey puts the clipboard down and says “go out there and create.” Most of the time it leads to the Irish coming out in a 1-4 set where the point guard (whether it be Tory Jackson or Chris Thomas or Chris Quinn) tries to take his man off the dribble. The last time I remember this working was when Chris Thomas hit a shot to beat St. John’s at the buzzer during the ’04-’05 season. We’re not built for a slow, half-court game but a coach has to realize that in each contest there will come a point where an offensive set is necessary. Part of being a great coach in any sport on any level is the ability to make adjustments. Even on the offensive side of the ball—where Brey’s teams clearly excel—the necessary adaptability to be anything more than a fringe team is lacking.

(The Burn has completely dispelled the notion that we’re unable to play a slow, half-court game. This is a very smart team that moves the ball very well in any situation.)

There are also a wide variety of personnel decisions he makes on a yearly basis that are just maddening. Almost every year he decides to go with only a six or seven deep rotation. This allegedly helps the offense maintain its flow but usually at the expense of running out of gas down the stretch of the season. Take this year for example. I don’t think anyone can provide a legitimate reason that Joey Brooks, Jack Cooley, and Carleton Scott couldn’t have played a bigger role earlier in the season. At the same time no one can convince me that Jonathan Peoples should have been anything more than the tenth man on this year’s squad.

(Not a whole lot to complain about this year in terms of personnel. Sure, people cry that there isn’t enough depth but the reality is that there aren’t more than eight people on this team that could make any sort of contribution this season. I don’t see anyone rotting on the bench that should be playing minutes like Carleton Scott and Jack Cooley last season. Jerian Grant probably could’ve made a small impact but he’s redshirting so that’s a moot point.

Brey always says depth is overrated and he’s not necessarily wrong—John Wooden’s rotation was only seven deep and that worked out ok—but I also think you have to maximize all the talent on your roster each especially in such a tough conference. That doesn’t apply to this season though.)

Brey almost seems to slow-play guys so that they can emerge unexpectedly as juniors instead of giving them 8 to 12 hard, intense minutes a game early in their careers to give the starters a blow while giving them valuable experience. We’ve already established we don’t have the caliber of athlete that Syracuse and UConn have so why wouldn’t we counteract that by maximizing the talent we actually do have on the roster? Carleton Scott is the best athlete on the team and instantly upgrades our defense the moment he steps on the court. Was his attitude that bad in the first two months of the season that he couldn’t have gone out and contributed the way he has been the past couple games? Why couldn’t Jack Cooley have been put in for a few minutes per game to bang around inside? He’s actually an upgrade over Harangody on the defensive end. No one is calling for these guys to play 25-30 minutes a game; it just seems to be a waste when they rot on the bench as we slip farther and farther toward the wrong side of the bubble.

(This has always driven me nuts but once again, this doesn’t apply to this season. Judging by recent comments about how players need to buy into sitting for a few seasons I doubt it’ll change. This isn’t something that will cripple or doom Brey if he doesn’t alter his philosophy so I try not to get too hung up on it.)

To me the most damning evidence against Brey is not what we have seen on the court, it’s what we’ve heard from his mouth. Last December when his team was ranked in the top 15 he stated that he would be content with a 9-9 league record. From this Chicago Tribune article he stated, "Where do I sign on Dec. 26? I don't want to sell us short, but I've been through the cycle of the league nine years now. You thrive when you can, then when rotate up into that (difficult schedule), can you survive?"

(You want to talk about a 180? How about the fact that he’s publicly stating that the team is gunning for the Big East regular season title and a spot in the Chicago pod in the NCAA’s? I just about fell out of my chair when I read this article by Andy Katz; I was absolutely thrilled.

Could it be that he feels everything has lined up and it’s time for Notre Dame to take the leap? Is the fact that ND has a savvy, veteran team in a year where every major contender has major flaws enough to make him think something special could be on the horizon?

I have no idea, but I love the change in attitude. In my eyes his unwillingness to take on the challenge of taking “the next step” was far and away his most glaring flaw. This season has a completely different tune than the ’08-’09 campaign where it seemed like his main objective was to limit expectations. Ty Nash said after the UConn victory that they “expect to win every game.” They carry themselves like that proclamation isn’t empty and that’s truly a breath of fresh air.)

When I read that I realized Mike Brey probably had run his course at Notre Dame. Odds are high that we’ll never surpass this plateau under the current regime—middle of the road Big East team that lives on the bubble every season—because the guy leading the ship isn’t striving to push the program to new heights. He’s content with this state of affairs and armed with a Bob Davie-like laundry list of excuses to defend his teams’ shortcomings.

(Brey seems to be pushing. Let’s see if it drives the program to new heights.

Also, Bob Davie would call a timeout here to offer a rebuttal but he used all three of them in the first three paragraphs so he has none remaining.)

Last year—when he had his best team in his ten years at Notre Dame, a preseason top ten outfit—it was the schedule that was to blame. Then he went on record stating that the heightened expectations were unrealistic in the first place. Was our team a bit overrated in the preseason when we found ourselves in the top ten last year? Yes, it was. But we had the best player in the Big East, a veteran squad, and a high octane offense that completed a 14-4 regular season the previous year. It’s crazy to think we shouldn’t have been a top 25 team and it’s even more incredulous to suggest that we should have been even flirting with being on the bubble. Brey set the bar so low that the Irish tripped over it and that is nothing short of unacceptable.

(2008-2009 was a colossal disappointment and inexcusable, but the last twelve months have successfully shifted me back to the Brey Camp albeit somewhat cautious/hesistantly.)

The reality is that for better or worse Mike Brey will not be fired after this season. He’s only two years removed from being dubbed Big East Coach of the Year and replacing him would unleash a media firestorm. In all honesty, I believe that next year this team is poised to have a season much like ’06-’07 when expectations were low and they emerged as a surprise top 25 team by the end of the season. People are going to overestimate how much the loss of Harangody will set ND back, I absolutely love the core of Abromaitis-Hansbrough-Martin-Nash-Scott-Brooks, and we’re going to fall into an easier schedule rotation than the last two years. Another successful year and another NCAA berth will silence the critics for a little longer, but it’s more than likely that they’ll reappear in a few seasons as we fall into the same pattern we’ve developed over the last decade.

(All predictions for 2010-2011 were pretty spot-on. Here’s hoping the reappearance of the old pattern prediction is wrong.)

If the hammer does eventually fall a huge question arises: who will Notre Dame turn toward? That’s far and away the toughest piece of this puzzle. Common sense says you don’t cut loose a good coach unless you have someone lined up that you think is better. Notre Dame is not a job that would attract any top level coach—those that throw out names like Gary Williams and Tom Izzo aren’t even remotely in touch with reality. More than likely we would end up having to roll the dice with a somewhat unproven commodity and hope it pans out.

(Not worth talking about. Swarbrick is squarely in his corner.)

There isn’t anyone out there that jumps out right now, but I’d keep a close eye on Billy Taylor over the next three years should Brey’s teams continue to fall short. He’s a former ND basketball player that took Lehigh to the NCAA tournament—which is like taking the Kansas City Royals to the World Series—and is currently turning around a Ball State program that was in the toilet thanks to Ronny Thompson.

(Billy’s doing a nice job turning around Ball State but the job opening at ND won’t be available for a long time.)

I like Mike Brey a lot. I had the opportunity to meet him a few times in my time at ND and the guy is just so likeable and such a class act that you just want him to succeed in the worst way. I want him to be here another ten years, to take Notre Dame to the next level—which to me is the level of Villanova on Tier 1.5 in the Big East. It’s just disheartening how obvious it is that he doesn’t have ambitions of taking this program higher.

(Still like Brey. Still want him to succeed. I desperately want this year to be the first building block to becoming a better program but I’m certainly not ready to declare, “he’s figured it out and ND basketball is on the verge of breaking into the top tier of the Big East.”)

If you need further proof read this article from yesterday written by Teddy Greenstein. Brey defends himself by pointing to the failures the program endured before he arrived over ten years ago. Looking into the somewhat distant past instead of taking on any sort of accountability for recent shortcomings tells me he’s happy with where Notre Dame Basketball is today and doesn’t understand why others wouldn’t be as well.

(Brey says what he really thinks too much some times if that makes sense. Sometimes silence is golden. He was really defensive in that Greenstein article because at that point he was feeling some legitimate heat probably for the first time in his career in South Bend.)

Mike Brey helped resuscitate a dormant program and made it relevant on a national scene for the first time in a long time. He deserves plenty of credit for doing so. But this is not a situation where Brey has become a victim of his own success—it’s a matter of him becoming too comfortable with the status quo and not striving hard enough to take the next step...or worse yet, shying away from that next step.

(A big part of me thinks Swarbrick’s support has made Brey feel much more at ease about heightening expectations. At least I hope that’s the case.)

He wants to experience success, but it's an equal priority to try to keep his team under the radar. You can't have it both ways. In order to take the leap you have to embrace the pressure and expectations that come with it, not run away from them. I'm not convinced he has the necessary attitude and approach to take on that transformation.

(Don’t worry, we’re almost done…Don't you feel like you should get a t-shirt or something for successfully reading this entire column?)

If his ultimate goal when he arrived was to make the Irish relevant he’s achieved his objective. If he has no greater aspirations then it’s time to find someone who will aim to take the program higher.

(Irish fans will know a lot more about whether Brey has truly changed when Hansbrough graduates this spring. Will there be a continued commitment to defense? Will the team maintain the swagger and confidence they seem to absorb from Ben? Will Swarbrick’s support and supreme vote of confidence make Brey comfortable enough to make a conscious decision to aim higher?

Brey’s personality and style is perfect for Notre Dame. If the tweaks he’s implemented this season stick and recruiting continues on the upward trend it appears to be on then perhaps the program is taking a step forward after spending the last seven season in neutral.)

Of course, we’ll worry about whether changes stick next season. In the present we’re witnessing an Irish squad with the highest ceiling since Digger roamed the sidelines.

Here’s your opportunity to move the program forward and win over a huge chunk of the Irish Nation, Mike. A run to the Sweet 16—or beyond—will do that.

Make it happen. We’re pulling for you.

Irish Basketball: Something Special Brewing?

It's long overdue, but I've finally carved out some time to put down some thoughts on Notre Dame's great start to the 2010-2011 basketball season. The Irish currently sit comfortably at #14 in the polls and 17-4 overall in the midst of what essentially amounts to a bye week.

Monday's victory over #2 Pitt on the road has Irish fans convinced that great things are on the way while others are still very skeptical about the true ceiling of the team. Let's dive right into what's gone on over first few months of the year

True Grit

There is no debating that Ben Hansbrough is the heart and soul of this year’s Irish squad. He has taken the torch from Tory Jackson and become the de facto leader on the court, not only igniting the Irish offense but far more importantly awakening a long dormant (read: non-existent) Irish defense.

In almost every season of the last decade Notre Dame has been one of the worst defensive teams in the country. That has completely changed this year and it’s blatantly obvious to anyone that’s followed the team through the years.

Now there may be some non-believers out there that will claim it’s an illusion, but statistics support the theory that there's been marked improvement. Here is a list with the number of games Notre Dame allowed an opponent to score 80+ points in the past five seasons:

2009-2010: 5
2008-2009: 9
2007-2008: 10
2006-2007: 6
2005-2006: 7

You know how many times Notre Dame has allowed 80 points this season? ONE! And it was in a double overtime victory against Georgia. My safe assumption is that Mike Brey didn't suddenly have a some sort of defensive epiphany this offseason. Hansbrough is tough, gritty, and relentless and these traits have rubbed off on the rest of the team on the defensive side of the ball. In key spots Notre Dame has found ways to get the necessary stops.

Read that last sentence again. When’s the last time we’ve been able to utter that about the basketball team?

The team has taken on the personality of its leader and that’s making a colossal difference on a team that isn’t nearly as high-octane on the offensive end as in previous years. He’s not the fastest guy, he’s not the most athletic guy, but that doesn’t stop Hansbrough from hounding whoever he’s assigned to guard.

He is almost single-handedly debunking the myth that Notre Dame doesn’t have the athletes to play good defense in the Big East. Defense is not as much about having athletes as it is about effort and attitude. Ben Hansbrough proves that every time he takes the court and the result has been the best defensive team of the Mike Brey Era—or at the very least the best since Ryan Humphrey was sending shots into the fourth row.

Burn Baby, Burn

I know it's ugly, but I personally LOVE The Burn Offense. It's exactly what Notre Dame needs to do to compete with the upper echelon Big East teams (read: teams with loads of athleticism). If we line up against the Pitts and Louisvilles of the world and try to just go up and down the court with them we're going to win 1 out of every 4 times. By shortening the game we limit opponent possessions and over time begin to frustrate the living hell out of them.

Year in and year out we're one of the most efficient teams in the entire NCAA in terms of points per offensive possession and The Burn plays right into that. We're saying, "we're going to make it a game of first team to 60 and whoever is more efficient with the ball will win." Frankly, I like our odds in a game like that and the results prove that to be true. In the 8 games Notre Dame has used The Burn they’re 6-2 including three wins over Pitt and four total victories over ranked teams. The two losses? By a combined 3 points.

Hansbrough was masterful in his orchestration of the offense against Pitt even without his old backcourt mate Tory Jackson to aid him. Last year the combination of Ben and Tory was great at creating a quality opportunity under time constraints—this is where having that offensive chemistry that Brey raves about (at the expense of developing a bench) comes up big.

A lot of times the defense begins to press a bit if only because they're antsy and frustrated by how slow everything develops and how patient they need to be. That lack of patience creates a crease and when we convert it completely deflates the other team.

Just think about the mental letdown a defense experiences when an opponent hits a shot at the end of the shot clock. Now picture that happening once every few possessions over the course of the entire game...and when ND picks up an offensive rebound it starts all over again. That has a serious mental effect on the opponent and the collective result usually turns out in Notre Dame's favor.

The Fly in the Ointment

In a season full of so many pleasant surprises there’s been one somewhat baffling disappointment: Scott Martin. Mike Brey has raved about how he’s the best offensive player he’s ever coached. In the WNG basketball preview last year Kyle McAlarney said, “Scott is as talented a player as ND has had in recent years, the most talented player I ever played with at Notre Dame…He reminds me of Chris Mullen, he is a pure scorer.”

Needless to say my expectations were very, very high heading into the season. So far they’re about a few acres from even being approached.

Martin is a serviceable complementary player, but he’s hardly been the offensive force he was built up to be. He's been a below average shooter (36% FG and 30% 3-pt in Big East play), a relatively slow defender (tied with Cooley in steals with a whopping 5), has flashed mediocre touch around the basket, and is a marginal rebounder. That’s not Chris Mullen, it’s the poor man’s Dan Miller.

Now there are a variety of reasons for why he’s had such a tough time making an impact this season. First and foremost is the fact that he suffered a devastating knee injury last year. Is it possible that the step he’s certainly lost could have robbed him of his explosiveness? Absolutely, in fact it’s probable.

Another huge factor is the adjustment to the speed of the Big East after two whole years off from game action. There are times when he’s out there where you can tell he’s overwhelmed and has a hard time processing everything.

There were back-to-back possessions in the Syracuse game where Martin got the ball, panicked despite the fact that there really wasn’t a lot of pressure, and made a quick pass right into the hands of a defender. It was like the kid in 8th grade that barely plays and doesn’t want the ball in his hands because he doesn’t want to screw up.

I’m not ready to write off Scott Martin yet, but unfortunately my hope of him turning a corner this year is fading fast simply because we’ve yet to see any real flashes that indicate an arrival is on its way. I hope he proves me wrong, changes his number from #14 to #17, begins talking with a thick New York accent, and starts making it rain like this guy.

Uncharted Territory

Notre Dame is not a great team, but in a watered down year across the board in the NCAA it's certainly good enough to expect a berth in the Sweet 16. Who knows, depending on how the cards break in March the Irish could sneak even farther in the tournament. One of the ways to ensure the cards break is locking down a #3 seed.

Of course a team's objective is to earn as high a seed as possible, but this is particularly important for Notre Dame. Most projections have the Irish at either a #4 or #5 and in all honesty that's probably where they'll end up. But if they can manage to sneak into the bracket as a #3 they'll avoid a top seed in the round of 16 and open the door for a Cinderella run.

Look at the four top seeds in Bracketology right now and compare them to the next eight teams:

1: Duke, Kansas, Ohio State, Pitt

2: San Diego St, Texas, Villanova, UConn

3: BYU, Texas A&M, Syracuse, Purdue

Let's assume for the sake of this exercise that there's some sort of shuffling between the #2 and #3 seeds but the top seeds remain the same. The committee would shy away from putting an Irish squad in the same part of a bracket where they could face a fellow conference team in the Sweet 16. That means if ND is a #3 seed they could face San Diego St, Texas, BYU, Texas A&M, or Purdue. Those are all games that Notre Dame is absolutely capable of winning.

If Notre Dame lands as a #4 or #5 that means a date with Ohio State, Kansas, or Duke. Those three teams spell "good night" for Cinderella.

It's unrealistic to start making plans for Irish basketball in April, but it's time to heighten and embrace expectations in South Bend. Mike Brey has always been very reluctant to do that and in some instances I think that's sabotaged the team (specifically in '08-'09). This year's squad is different and one quote from Tyrone Nash after the Georgetown victory verifies it.

"We expect to win every game. With this group of guys we should win every game."

That's a far cry from Brey's normal mantra that usually includes "we just want to be in the top eight teams in the Big East." That's a sign that this team is not shying away from success; in fact, they're expecting it.

The fact that Brey hasn't done any sort of "damage control" to reel in expectations may actually hint that even he thinks something special could be brewing in South Bend. It's a baby step toward embracing heightened expectations, but hey, it's a start!

Two Dudes, One Post: Guest Edition - Part II

The extended Two Dudes Q&A with Black and Green Irish Men's Basketball Report rolls on today. For Part I click here.

1. There have been multiple nationally televised Big East conference games where the lower bowl of the student section wasn't even close to full. To be perfectly blunt, it seems that the majority of the student body couldn't care less about the basketball team. You're a current student. Is the indifference that comes through on TV--and the message boards--as bad as it seems?

We Never Graduate: As much as I'd love to still be a student I'm not. I will now pull out my old student ID, stare at it, and silently sob. For the record I think the student body should be ashamed of their showing this year, but that’s a rant for another day.

Black and Green: The student support has been up and down this year. Obviously ND never has the kind of support seen at universities where basketball is king, but we typically can get a much better turnout than has been the case in several of the games this year. While there has been an uptick recently (the student section was pretty full for the UCONN game), Sunday afternoon contests against South Florida and St. John's barely drew anyone.

I think the way last season ended and this season began has been the number one factor behind our low student attendance. With the football team struggling and Coach Brey's squad ranked in the top-ten, basketball was king on campus for the first couple of months of the 2008-09 season. The College Gameday experience and subsequent support for the Irish against Connecticut that January was one of the highlights of my basketball watching career. At the time, I felt that the program could carry that momentum and the construction of a new arena into a permanent place amongst the college basketball elite.

Unfortunately, that opportunity was wasted. The UCONN game just became loss number three of a seven game slide and even a huge win over Louisville and deep NIT run were not enough to keep the students interested. The football team may have sucked again this year, but the hiring of Brian Kelly has kept students looking forward to next fall instead of focusing on the present.

With last year's letdown still a recent memory and nonconference losses to Northwestern and Loyola Marymount seemingly dooming the season from the start, it's been hard for anyone to get excited about a bubble program. The recent success has helped turned things around in the students' minds a lot, but it has come too late to display a consistent increase in attendance.

I think much of the internet bashing of students has been a bit unfair. It's a consistent topic for the message boards, but I haven't really addressed it too much on the blog. Yes, student support is too low and we need to see a change in the way the student body views the basketball program. However, there are so many factors involved: hangover from yet another frustrating football season, terrible South Bend weather, cupcake non-conference opponents, the sheer number of home games. Without a good team to watch (a Sweet Sixteen contender), the students just aren't going to put in the effort to follow the program like they do for football. That's not an excuse, it's just a fact we have to deal with.

2. Let's take a small lead of faith and say the Irish sneak in the Big Dance. What's their ceiling when they arrive?

WNG: Well this isn't a leap of faith anymore. Their ceiling is based 100% on the draw they receive. If they land in the 8-9 game and have to match up against Kansas or Kentucky then the buck will stop there (for a preview see the ND-Arizona Sweet 16 game from '03). If we're in the 7-10 spot and find a weak 2 seed then we can start to dream big (Elite 8 isn't likely, but not totally unreasonable). It's just a matter of how the deck breaks. Check back on Sunday night and I'll tell you exactly what our ceiling is.

B&G: Again, I really need to stop predicting this team's behavior. With the right draw and the current momentum, I could really see them making it to the second weekend. However, this luck could play itself out very quickly. Regardless it will be interesting to watch.

3. Mike Brey deserves applause for getting Cooley, Scott, and Broghammer to contribute when Harangody went down... but does he deserve equal criticism for not utilizing them more at an earlier point in the season?

WNG: He absolutely does. I don't understand why he's so slow to move toward putting in younger players who can make a contribution if even it's limited. It happened with Russell Carter a couple years back, it happened with Nash, and it happened this year with Cooley and Scott. To me there is little to no upside having Jonathan Peoples on the court yet all year he ate up minutes while Scott and (even more so) Cooley collected splinters on the bench. Everyone--especially the media--has short-term memory though and the only thing people will talk about is how Brey brought the team out of the ashes when his superstar went down. Those that watched all season will realize he was responsible for being in the ashes in the first place.

Perhaps the thing that blows my mind the most is the fact that it took a shade under ten years for Brey to adjust to an effective strategy that neutralizes the athleticism of elite Big East teams. He's cried about how we can't possibly match up with the top tier of teams in the conference yet did little or nothing to adjust until three weeks ago. Now he's in the middle of a month-long coaching clinic where we might—HUGE, HUUUUUGE might--be on the verge of taking the leap to the next level. It's beyond baffling. When I try to understand it my nose starts to bleed.

B&G: Absolutely. As always, this help has been better late than never, but there is no reason why we could not have been playing Scott on a more consistent basis all year and giving Cooley/Broghammer at least five minutes per game. Scott has really come into his own recently and developed into the kind of athletic rebounder that the program has needed for years. His offensive development has been surprising, as he seemed to struggle with the ball at the start of the year, but could have come even sooner with a bit of game experience.

We could have used a big man off the bench all season and there is no excuse for why Coach Brey would have been willing to burn redshirts on two of his freshman bigs in meaningless contests without giving them a chance to spell Harangody in short stretches during the Big East season. Gody's injury forced him to open up the rotation a bit and we were able to see that these guys actually do have a bit of talent.

4. Nearly ten years are in the books of the Mike Brey era. Do you believe he's the guy who takes Notre Dame to the next level?

WNG: As recently as three weeks ago I would've answered with a resounding NO, but I'm granting him one last reprieve. The reinvention of his squad has been a beautiful thing to watch and it's the most striking evidence as to why he's held in such high regard by colleagues. My decision as to whether he's the guy to take us to the next level will not be determined in the NCAA tournament; rather, it will come this offseason when Brey will be faced with the choice of talking his team down or embracing the challenge of being the hunted.

I really think next year's squad has a lot of potential and thanks to this late surge of success it won't be under the radar like he hoped it would be. If he spends the entire offseason campaigning to avoid the "TV Schedule" like he did during the '08-'09 season then it'll prove to me he's not the guy. Should he go the other route then maybe there's hope.

B&G: No, I really don't. I like Mike Brey a lot as a person and still think he is a very good coach, but my patience finally wore out on him this season. Unfortunately, I have no idea who the right guy could be. Is it Fran McCaffery? I like what he's done at Siena, but it is hard to say definitively that he would be an improvement over Brey.

Earlier in the year, I supported a coaching change if only to breathe new life into the program. Now however, that would be a much harder sell. There simply is not a Brian Kelly-type coach (or better) available for the hoops program. Any new blood would involve a lot of risk. If Brey continues to make the Big Dance at the current rate, he's going to be retained. I don't think that is the right mentality for the program, but I really don't know if there is anyone out there who can bring about the success we should strive for under the current conditions.

Two Dudes, One Post: Guest Edition - Part I

This edition of Two Dudes, One Post will focus solely on Notre Dame Basketball so we enlisted the help of Matt Lafortune, a current Notre Dame student that runs the website Black and Green Irish Men's Basketball Report. We had eight questions to address so sit back, relax, and prepare to digest a two-part smorgasbord of Irish Hoops.

1. How did this season play out in terms of your preseason expectations?

We Never Graduate: Before the season I predicted we'd be living on the bubble which means we're right about in line with what I thought. It's been a roller coaster season but it appears we're peaking at just the right time. If we get the right draw (please for the love of God throw us in a 7-10 game with Purdue as the 2 seed in our pod) we can do some serious damage, which would far surpass my preseason expectations.

Black & Green: That's such a tough question. I entered this year thinking we would be better than last season's team. Not the top-ten early season ranking for the program a year ago, but certainly good enough to merit NCAA consideration. Tim Abromaitis has been everything I expected and more. His performance has been such a great improvement over the Hillesland/Ayers fiasco that we should have been two or three games better on that basis alone. On paper, the addition of Abro and Hansbrough replacing McAlarney should have made this team a lock for the NCAAs.

Yet they weren't. Until recently, this team would have been lucky to nail down an NIT bid. Its defensive effort was god-awful for 27 games. The once great star of the program turned into a selfish shell of his former self and Mike Brey was another losing streak away from finding a new job.

The recent success hasn't made me change my mind about this season being a disappointment, indeed I think we should have played like this all year, but there is something endearing about the current squad. Without Harangody, they have been transformed into something we haven't seen on campus in years: a gritty underdog that is willing to fight with anyone and can actually play a little defense when it counts. Sure '07 and '08 were surprises, but this one is different. I have never seen a team completely transform its identity over the course of the year like this. They could very well make a run over the next few weeks and reach a level of success that Mike Brey has only seen once. Or they could completely flame out and lose their next two. Regardless, it's hard to be surprised anymore. This season has been nothing like what I expected.

2. Who is your MVP of the regular season?

WNG: I'm really torn. Ben Hansbrough blew away the expectations I had for him coming in to this season, but when push comes to shove I have to go with Tory Jackson. He's been a gutsy performer all year who was a big part of keeping the high-octane attack going for the first part of the season and an even larger part in making the adjustment to a slow, grind it out attack a smooth one. He's a sparkplug and when Brey gushes about him it's totally deserved. Tory really helped the team stay afloat when they could have closed up shop after Harangody's injury.

B&G: That's a really tough one. Harangody was the obvious choice, but the team has improved so much without him that it's hard to stick with the All-American. Scott is most-improved. He has been the most valuable guy during this winning streak and has kept a level head while persevering through a playing time crisis to develop into one of our best players. Abromaitis has come off a redshirt year to score in double digits on all but three occasions. His scoring ability and support on the glass has been much-needed all year. He's been utterly reliable in every game this season and should continue to develop into a star.

But I'll go with Tory Jackson. He scores less than ten points per game, frequently takes ill-advised shots in the lane around much taller defenders, and has seen a sharp decrease in his rebound numbers this season. Yet his contributions to the team have been immeasurable. For two-thirds of the year, he was the only guy who seemed to give a damn about playing D. He will continue to be matched up with the best scorers from our opponents in the postseason and I can't wait to see him challenge some of the best players in the country.

On top of everything, he is the heart and soul of the program. He is a passionate leader and bleeds blue and gold. Many will remember his 22 points against UCONN that kept the Irish Tournament hopes alive, but I'll never forget the pure excitement that was in his voice for the postgame speech. The Notre Dame senior class of 2010 boasted a former Big East Player of the Year whose individual accomplishments rank amongst the greatest in Notre Dame and Big East basketball history, but he pales in comparison to what Tory has meant to this program. Harangody will go on to have a very successful pro career, but I can think of few better players to start a team around than Tory Jackson.

3. In your eyes what was the season's biggest disappointment?

WNG: Uttering this on ESPN would lead to my public crucifixion, but honestly it's Luke Harangody. I'm of the opinion he got terrible advice when it came to what he needed to do this season to prove he could make it in the NBA. Luke had shown over the course of his first three seasons that he could be an extremely effective scorer on the interior. What he needed to do this year was prove he could man up and be more than a human turnstile on defense while continuing to be a Barkley-esque force on the boards despite being a little on the short side (you can call this the DeJuan Blair Strategy). Instead he went the route of trying to prove he could be a perimeter threat. The result was a softer Luke Harangody that hovered around the three point line Luke Zeller style and launched twice as many threes this year as he did last year.

To say we're a better team without Luke is inaccurate, but I commented a couple weeks ago that if there was a way I could have freshman year Luke instead of senior year Luke down the stretch I'd make that trade in a heartbeat. Harangody was much more raw then, but he went down low and punished people with his physicality. He used to knock teeth out, he was like the big kid who didn't know his own strength and hurt all his little friends. I blame Brey a lot for enabling him to take on this new approach at the expense of the team's success.

Fortunately, since he's returned from his injury it seems like he's snapped back into freshman year mode at least a little bit. He attempted zero threes in his first two games back—the only two games all year he didn't launch one. Perhaps he's finally seen the light. Or maybe Brey flatout demanded he see the light. I don't really care which it was, but I hope he embraces his new role because we'd become a FAR more dangerous team. Until we confirm that though I'll still label him with the unsavory title of biggest disappointment.

B&G: Just the overall underperformance we saw for much of the year. Obviously, this team had the talent to perform amongst the league's best, but managed to throw away contests to Northwestern, Loyola Marymount, Cincy, Rutgers, and St. John's. I blame the short bench and the handling of Harangody for much of those problems.

Luke used this season as an extended pro tryout. I don't hold that against him too much, but the coaching staff should have had him riding the pine every time he threw up yet another dumb three pointer. He vacated the paint and destroyed the offensive flow by operating as a shooting guard in a center's body. The rest of the players were more than willing to watch him jack up 20+ shots a game and be our sole rebounding threat on the floor. With him out of the lineup, the ball movement has improved and every guy has been able to play to his ability. Call it the Ewing Theory or whatever you want. Luke Harangody's injury was the best thing that could have happened to our Tournament chances this season.

4. What will be your lasting memory of the 09-10 season?

WNG: Boy has this changed over the last few weeks. It was going to be Harangody's de-evolution at the expense of the team's success, but now it will forever be how the team rallied after Harangody's injury and played itself back from miles off the bubble to potential middle seed in the tournament. No matter what happens in the Big Dance I'll vividly remember the fantastic stretch of basketball we played to end the season.

B&G: That is still to be determined. I'm glad we didn't do this two weeks ago, because it would have been pretty negative. That still might be the case if the team regresses from its current form. However, if the season ended today I would have two major memories of this year.

First of all, the Loyola Marymount loss now seems like a harbinger of the struggles we saw in Big East play. There was no need for good defense, little intensity all day, and a late-game collapse against a vastly inferior opponent. My proudest moment right now is that UCONN game. It wasn't our best win (that would be against West Virginia way back in January, a game that was seemingly ages ago), but it was one we needed to win. After two big upsets, the team was due for a letdown but somehow pulled out a much needed victory in a low scoring defensive battle. The Marquette game came close to topping it, but there's nothing like getting the W on Senior Night like that with your best player in street clothes.

CLICK HERE FOR PART II

Irish 68, Hall 56: MMMMM, MMMMM DOUG GOTTLIEB

Mr. Gottlieb spent plenty of time over the last week yapping about how Seton Hall should be ahead of Notre Dame in the pecking order for the NCAA tournament. Well, the Irish promptly went out and laid the smackdown on the Hall. The lesson as always is never trust someone who was stupid enough to get kicked out of college for credit card fraud. I have to quote the great Samuel Jackson Beer Commercial and ask Dougy Poo one thing: “HOW’S IT TASTE $%#&$#&@#%$!!!!”

Four quick things because I’m at work and I should be preparing for a presentation, not doing this.

1. Lazarus Arrives to the Party Early

I’ve been very critical of Mike Brey over the last couple years and that reached a boiling point last month when I wrote an article for this site about how it was probably time to find someone else to take ND to the next level. The Irish promptly unleashed arguably their six gutsiest, complete performances of the year and now Brey is back on hallowed ground in the eyes of the pundits on TV. I saw this latest resurrection coming but I thought it would be next year because I was fairly certain this year was a lost cause. Crow never tasted so good.

Mike Brey deserves a ton of credit for transforming this team and proving that he is capable of being a top-level coach. He has completely junked his normal high-octane style of play in favor of going with a patient, grinding, borderline Pete Carril-esque brand of basketball. The results have been staggering. We have worn down opponents with this new methodical approach on the offensive end and finishing them off with—dare I say it—relatively suffocating defense (Did I really just type that? Someone get me some smelling salts) on the other side of the ball.

Brey’s willingness to adapt with such a drastic change affirms the fact that the guy knows what he’s doing. Could this be a turning point for the entire program? That all depends on how he—not the team—handles the success. Does he downplay his team in the tournament and offseason or embrace the challenge of a potential bullseye on his team’s chest? If he does the latter than I believe we’ve turned a corner; if it’s the former than this is just a tease and the status quo will continue.

2. “Painful…yet Beautiful”

During last night’s game my buddy Pat sent me a text that read, “painful yet beautiful to watch our new style.” I couldn’t agree more, it’s Ron Hassler-ball on a higher level with a shot clock (let that Allentown Central Catholic Basketball reference soak in for a second). The grind it out game we played against a Seton Hall team that had put up 100+ points the night before almost made you feel sympathetic for the Pirates as they died a slow death on the court.

Brey’s “Burn Offense” is predicated on being able to get off a good shot in the last ten seconds of the shot clock, something we’d failed miserably at when we’d attempted to do it in the past (see: ’05-’06 season). This year’s squad is so smart with the ball and exploits weakness in the defense so effectively that the offense has been deadly. First of all it limits the number of possessions both teams get over the course of a game. For a team as efficient with possessions as Notre Dame (#2 in the entire country in offensive efficiency) that’s a very good thing.

Secondly it frustrates the opposing team so much on the defensive end that it starts to affect them on the opposite end of the court as well. Inevitably they begin to quicken their offensive possessions in an attempt to quicken the pace of the game. The patience of Tory Jackson and Ben Hansbrough prevents that from happening though, even when the Irish fall behind like they did at the beginning of the Seton Hall game.

Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—it has translated into a different defensive team. The Irish have gone from one of the worst defensive units in the country to a smothering defensive team. Part of it is the “Burn Offense” getting the opponent out of rhythm, the other part is Notre Dame having more energy to exert on defense thanks to the more methodical offensive approach.

Watching this style of play isn’t nearly as fun as the normal run n’ gun offense we’re accustomed too*, but I’ll take ugly, boring victories over fun, exciting losses any day of the week. Here’s hoping that Brey doesn’t junk this after the season and at the very least finds a happy medium between the two.

* = Be forewarned that the student body will most likely use this as another excuse to not attend games.

3. The Return of Bam Bam

Luke Harangody had to listen to people question speculate as to whether Notre Dame was a better team without him for about a month. A five point, two rebound game in the Marquette victory didn’t exactly silence those critics, but the 20 and 10 performance last night certainly did. What returned last night was a Luke Harangody that was committed to getting shots inside, not camping out 18 feet away from the basket.

I understand Luke may have been hurt by fans implying they didn’t want him back, but the reality is that he needed to change his game in order for the team to be successful. His hiatus allowed his teammates to come into their own, made Brey tweak a strategy that wasn’t working, and had to be a bit humbling for Luke. The injury was the turning point of the season and four weeks later we’re a far better team because of it.

Now that he’s back he needs to integrate himself into a system that’s working. There is no reason for him to be hoisting 25 shots a game any more and certainly no excuse for launching five three-point shots each contest. He needs to do his dirty work around the basket and patrol the baseline on offense against 2-3 zones (he put on a clinic on how beat a zone by running baseline against Syracuse earlier in the year). He’s instant offense off the bench and we’re a much better team when he’s available as a weapon. If he embraces this new role we’re going to be a team no one wants to face next week.

4. Quick Hits

Tory Jackson demonstrated in the second half of the Seton Hall game how he is capable of taking over a game on offense when he wants. He did it in the Big East tournament as a freshman as well. I love the kid and appreciate all he’s done, I’ve always just wondered why he didn’t flip the switch like that more over his career…If you really love the game of basketball and the intricacies of it then you love watching Ben Hansbrough. He’s got an endless motor and is so fundamentally sound and smart on both ends of the court…Greg Monroe is a 2-3 Zone KILLER…If Greivis Vasquez was on Duke he’d be the most hated player of all-time. He makes Joakim Noah seem likeable…I have no doubt that the NCAA Tournament will expand to 96 teams and it just makes me sad. It won’t be for the good of college basketball, it will be because of greed and dollar bills. The best part of the entire tournament is the Cinderellas that emerge in the first weekend. Mark my words: the expansion will destroy it…Jonathan Peoples was on the Big East Tournament intro montage even though he’s our ninth man. He was also prominently featured in the team intro video his sophomore year when he never played (he was chugging away on a stationary bike as Fort Minor blared in the background). What are the odds he somehow finds his way in to One Shining Moment this year? 75% chance?

Rapid Fire Reactions

I feel the need to chime in before the last couple weeks of the season with some quick reflections on the Irish resurgence and thoughts on what's to come.

1. Rally Sons of Notre Dame

Mike Brey deserves a lot of credit for getting role players who got limited minutes (like Carleton Scott and Jack Cooley) to make major contributions over this great little four game stretch. The players deserve even more credit for not folding when their leading scorer and rebounder went out. Everyone from Tory Jackson to Mike Broghammer has handed in gutty performances during this win streak and even in the tight overtime loss to Louisville.

The questions I have for Mike Brey is why it took an injury to incorporate these guys (Scott/Cooley) with extended playing time and why Peoples was relegated to this role on the bench only after Harangody went down (he's averaged 4mpg in this three game win streak, the only three games all season where he played less than 10 minutes)?

2. Now That's What I Call Defense (Volume I)

For the first time in all my years of watching Notre Dame Basketball under Mike Brey I watched a team that was truly committed to defense when they shut down UConn. The Huskies have much better athletes at every single position but thanks to some great hustle and execution of a perfect gameplan the Irish smothered them.

This was the ultimate debunking of the myth that ND can't play good defense against the more athletic top-tier teams in the Big East. All it takes is effort and commitment. If they can keep this up over the next twelve months the Irish will be in the tournament in two weeks and a legitimate force to be reckoned with next year.

3. Great Scott

In the preseason predictions we did on the site with K-Mac and Ayers I chose Carleton as my "Player Most Likely to Surprise." The last two weeks have totally solidified my man crush on our rail-thin forward with the condor wing span. Despite the fact that he would be a middleweight in Bengal Bouts he's shown he possesses game-changing ability on the defensive end. He's a fantastic weakside help defender and someone who opponents now must think about when they drive into the lane. Whether he gets a hand on a shot or not he usually redirects the path of it thanks to his Manute Bol-esque arms.

Jay Bilas has to wear a bib when he watches Scott's tape. Also, I'd like to request that the band plays this song whenever he makes a big play before a timeout. Scott should probably learn the dance too--it'd probably shoot him up to #1 on my list of all-time favorite players if he did.

4. A Wise Man Once Said "Know Your Role"

When Luke Harangody comes back he must adjust the way he's been playing. There's a huge body of work that scouts can look at from this year to determine whether they think he can hack it in the pros, now it's time to focus strictly on what will help the team. He needs to channel Freshman Year "Bam Bam" Harangody, the guy who lived inside and roughed people up on both ends of the court. He needs to toughen up on the defensive end and worry about getting shots in the paint rather than camping out by the three point arc. A lot of people thought he had to shoot 20 times a game in order for the Irish to do anything this year. The last few weeks have proven that belief wrong.

This team has been playing incredibly well in his absence and I think a large part of that is the personnel fits Brey's scheme a bit better. Tyrone Nash is not the offensive force that Luke is, but he plays with his back to the basket, has a nice little arsenal of post-moves, and has FANTASTIC vision and passing ability for a big man. As we touched on earlier, Carleton Scott has added a new dynamic on defense while Cooley has added the bruising minutes Harangody used to supply his first couple years. Obviously you're not going to plant Luke on the bench when he comes back, but the time has come to tweak his game for the good of the team down the homestretch.

5. Don't Start the Dance Yet...

Everyone seems to think one more win gets us in. I disagree completely. We need two more whether it's Marquette and our first round Big East game or two in the Big East tournament. Yes, we're playing very, very well right now and have had some quality wins (Pitt, GTown, UConn, WVU), but it seems like everyone has conveniently forgotten that we have some pretty brutal albatrosses hanging around our necks right now (losses to Rutgers, Northwestern, and--gulp--Loyola Marymount).

Right now we're on the good side of the bubble but it's hardly a comfortable position. Should we drop one of these next two games suddenly the pundits (and selection committee) will remember the sub-par RPI, the weak SOS, and the fact that we've got some bad, BAD losses. There's an easy way to take care of that and it's W-I-N.

6. My One NCAA Tournament Wish

If the Irish squeak into the tourney, please for the love of God match them up against Xavier in round one. Mikey and I have been praying for this matchup since we were 16 years old. It would lead to a flurry of trash-talking posts that could only be topped by a Notre Dame-Penn State football game. The bet would be hefty, but no amount of money or on-demand pushups wagered could match the pride that would be on the line.

And for the record, we'd curb stomp those Muskiqueers.

GO IRISH, BEAT MARQUETTE

Breaking Down Mike Brey

Over the past month the Irish’s somewhat promising season has come undone thanks to crushing defeats at the hands of Rutgers, Seton Hall, St. John’s, and Louisville. The latest trio of losses has led the masses to grab their pitchforks and call for the head of head coach Mike Brey. Other people argue that it is unfair to hold the program to a higher standard than it’s currently attained because it is unrealistic to think any coach could do any better with the hand Brey has been dealt.

Over the course of ten years Mike Brey has done a lot for the Notre Dame Basketball Program while dealing with some pretty tough restrictions (academics) and sub-standard facilities. Is it time for a change? There’s been a lot of literature out there recently about why Brey is the right fit or at least why he shouldn’t be let go (here’s an article by Lou Somogyi from BGI, one from Mike Coffey from ND Nation, and an entire state of the program from Kevin O’Neill) so I’ll try to present the educated counterpoint.

Brey has an impressive overall record and a rock solid record in the toughest conference in America, but eventually there comes a point when numbers don’t tell the entire story and you can see with your own eyes that a ceiling has been reached. Need an example from another sport? Call up some Philadelphia Eagles fans and get their take on the yearly Donovan McNabb-Andy Reid experience. Brey’s dismissal would have less to do with his body of work and more to do with his basic philosophies and the trends and attitudes that have been entrenched within the program over the course of his tenure.

We can start with the fact that inadequate attention is given to the simple fundamentals of basketball. I vividly remember Brey talking about the loss of Rob Kurz and what it meant to the team during the ’08-’09 campaign. He said, “Rob did all the little things like screening and we really miss that.” Now Rob Kurz was a great and underrated contributor who was greatly missed last year, but you’re telling me that when he left our ability to set screens left as well? Luke Harangody is 6-7, 250lbs. Tell me why he couldn’t square up, lay his body into someone, and spring one of the bombers we had last year for an open three?

Setting screens has nothing to do with talent; it has to do with focus and attention to detail. I realize that the players on the court shoulder some of the blame for not executing, but Brey has a responsibility to call out and hold players who can’t perform simple tasks like setting an effective pick accountable. Watching Zeller and Harangody set lazy, half-hearted screens last year as Kyle McAlarney and Ryan Ayers—guys who made open threes far more often than they missed them—tried to get free last year in half-court sets with limited success made me want to jam my head through a wall.

Attention to detail is an attitude that starts from the top and trickles down and it’s something Mike Brey simply lacks. It manifests itself on the boards as well. Countless times over the past couple years we have allowed offensive rebounds at the most inopportune time. Almost every week of the season it seems an Irish player appears on the wrong side of highlight reel putback dunk. Many times it’s not because we’re outmatched athletically, we just completely fail to turn and box a man out. Just a few weeks ago Rutgers essentially locked up a victory by tipping out a missed free throw in the last two minutes that sucked all the air out of the Irish balloon. That’s the definition of lacking focus.

Another more glaring shortcoming of Brey-coached teams is defense. There is absolutely no excuse for how terrible our defense is year in and year out. No, we do not have the elite athletes of other teams in the conference and we can’t expect to have a smothering Pitino-like press in the Big East. Does that mean there’s any defensible reason to be ranked toward the bottom of the entire NCAA in defensive efficiency every season? Absolutely not.

Brey has gone on record stating that he’s willing to sacrifice defense to maintain rhythm and flow on the offensive side of the ball. This is a guy who learned under the greatest high school coach ever (Morgan Wooten) and one of the greatest college coaches ever (Mike Krzyzewski). Both are icons in the sport that must cringe every time they hear their old assistant utter his philosophy. It blows my mind that in spite of learning at the foot of these legends and seeing how they operate and approach the game, Brey still takes on an indifferent and borderline dismissive attitude about defense.

One excuse that’s trotted out on behalf of shortcomings on the defensive end is the lack of athletes to employ an effective man-to-man all game long. Defense is not as much about having athletes as it is about effort and attitude. Those that tell you otherwise are wrong. Period. He’s right, we can’t lock down the upper level teams by playing man-to-man all day but that’s no reason to wave a white flag. Why not seek to neutralize the disadvantage we face through alternatives?

The Naval Academy doesn’t line up in traditional sets in football and hope to beat the Notre Dames of the world. They implement a disciplined offense designed to confuse their more talented opponents, shorten the game, and level the playing field as much as possible. Do they win all the time? Absolutely not (please use restraint on your Charlie Weis cracks), but sometimes they find a way (you may now unload on Charlie). The talent gap between Navy football and ND football is far greater than ND basketball and the rest of the Big East.

What about committing to a 2-3 Matchup Zone? It’s something that nobody—to my knowledge—in the Big East currently employs at least on a consistent basis. It could be a wrinkle to disguise our weaknesses and confuse offenses. Temple almost exclusively used the Matchup under John Chaney and had a great deal of success with it throughout the 90’s. Is it a slam dunk to work? No. Could it be worse than the current state of our defense? No. The unwillingness to address the problem over the course of his ten years is unacceptable. The ceiling for teams that can’t buckle down and make stops at crucial points in the game is very low—it doesn’t matter how vaunted their offense is.

Speaking of that explosive offense, let’s dissect that a bit. Much to Brey’s credit his teams are normally chock full of offensive firepower. When things are clicking it is a thing of beauty to watch and the Irish are capable of scoring in bunches that few teams can match. However, inevitably there are times in games where things don’t run like clockwork. Brey’s offensive philosophy is free-flowing, but when it stalls we never seem to have anything to fall back on. This becomes particularly evident down the stretch when games grind to a slower, half-court affair.

At the end of games instead of drawing up a play it seems Brey puts the clipboard down and says “go out there and create.” Most of the time it leads to the Irish coming out in a 1-4 set where the point guard (whether it be Tory Jackson or Chris Thomas or Chris Quinn) tries to take his man off the dribble. The last time I remember this working was when Chris Thomas hit a shot to beat St. John’s at the buzzer during the ’04-’05 season. We’re not built for a slow, half-court game but a coach has to realize that in each contest there will come a point where an offensive set is necessary. Part of being a great coach in any sport on any level is the ability to make adjustments. Even on the offensive side of the ball—where Brey’s teams clearly excel—the necessary adaptability to be anything more than a fringe team is lacking.

There are also a wide variety of personnel decisions he makes on a yearly basis that are just maddening. Almost every year he decides to go with only a six or seven deep rotation. This allegedly helps the offense maintain its flow but usually at the expense of running out of gas down the stretch of the season. Take this year for example. I don’t think anyone can provide a legitimate reason that Joey Brooks, Jack Cooley, and Carleton Scott couldn’t have played a bigger role earlier in the season. At the same time no one can convince me that Jonathan Peoples should have been anything more than the tenth man on this year’s squad.

Brey almost seems to slow-play guys so that they can emerge unexpectedly as juniors instead of giving them 8 to 12 hard, intense minutes a game early in their careers to give the starters a blow while giving them valuable experience. We’ve already established we don’t have the caliber of athlete that Syracuse and UConn have so why wouldn’t we counteract that by maximizing the talent we actually do have on the roster? Carleton Scott is the best athlete on the team and instantly upgrades our defense the moment he steps on the court. Was his attitude that bad in the first two months of the season that he couldn’t have gone out and contributed the way he has been the past couple games? Why couldn’t Jack Cooley have been put in for a few minutes per game to bang around inside? He’s actually an upgrade over Harangody on the defensive end. No one is calling for these guys to play 25-30 minutes a game; it just seems to be a waste when they rot on the bench as we slip farther and farther toward the wrong side of the bubble.

To me the most damning evidence against Brey is not what we have seen on the court, it’s what we’ve heard from his mouth. Last December when his team was ranked in the top 15 he stated that he would be content with a 9-9 league record. From this Chicago Tribune article he stated, "Where do I sign on Dec. 26? I don't want to sell us short, but I've been through the cycle of the league nine years now. You thrive when you can, then when rotate up into that (difficult schedule), can you survive?"

When I read that I realized Mike Brey probably had run his course at Notre Dame. Odds are high that we’ll never surpass this plateau under the current regime—middle of the road Big East team that lives on the bubble every season—because the guy leading the ship isn’t striving to push the program to new heights. He’s content with this state of affairs and armed with a Bob Davie-like laundry list of excuses to defend his teams’ shortcomings.

Last year—when he had his best team in his ten years at Notre Dame, a preseason top ten outfit—it was the schedule that was to blame. Then he went on record stating that the heightened expectations were unrealistic in the first place. Was our team a bit overrated in the preseason when we found ourselves in the top ten last year? Yes, it was. But we had the best player in the Big East, a veteran squad, and a high octane offense that completed a 14-4 regular season the previous year. It’s crazy to think we shouldn’t have been a top 25 team and it’s even more incredulous to suggest that we should have been even flirting with being on the bubble. Brey set the bar so low that the Irish tripped over it and that is nothing short of unacceptable.

The reality is that for better or worse Mike Brey will not be fired after this season. He’s only two years removed from being dubbed Big East Coach of the Year and replacing him would unleash a media firestorm. In all honesty, I believe that next year this team is poised to have a season much like ’06-’07 when expectations were low and they emerged as a surprise top 25 team by the end of the season. People are going to overestimate how much the loss of Harangody will set ND back, I absolutely love the core of Abromaitis-Hansbrough-Martin-Nash-Scott-Brooks, and we’re going to fall into an easier schedule rotation than the last two years. Another successful year and another NCAA berth will silence the critics for a little longer, but it’s more than likely that they’ll reappear in a few seasons as we fall into the same pattern we’ve developed over the last decade.

If the hammer does eventually fall a huge question arises: who will Notre Dame turn toward? That’s far and away the toughest piece of this puzzle. Common sense says you don’t cut loose a good coach unless you have someone lined up that you think is better. Notre Dame is not a job that would attract any top level coach—those that throw out names like Gary Williams and Tom Izzo aren’t even remotely in touch with reality. More than likely we would end up having to roll the dice with a somewhat unproven commodity and hope it pans out.

There isn’t anyone out there that jumps out right now, but I’d keep a close eye on Billy Taylor over the next three years should Brey’s teams continue to fall short. He’s a former ND basketball player that took Lehigh to the NCAA tournament—which is like taking the Kansas City Royals to the World Series—and is currently turning around a Ball State program that was in the toilet thanks to Ronny Thompson.

I like Mike Brey a lot. I had the opportunity to meet him a few times in my time at ND and the guy is just so likeable and such a class act that you just want him to succeed in the worst way. I want him to be here another ten years, to take Notre Dame to the next level—which to me is the level of Villanova on Tier 1.5 in the Big East. It’s just disheartening how obvious it is that he doesn’t have ambitions of taking this program higher.

If you need further proof read this article from yesterday written by Teddy Greenstein. Brey defends himself by pointing to the failures the program endured before he arrived over ten years ago. Looking into the somewhat distant past instead of taking on any sort of accountability for recent shortcomings tells me he’s happy with where Notre Dame Basketball is today and doesn’t understand why others wouldn’t be as well.

Mike Brey helped resuscitate a dormant program and made it relevant on a national scene for the first time in a long time. He deserves plenty of credit for doing so. But this is not a situation where Brey has become a victim of his own success—it’s a matter of him becoming too comfortable with the status quo and not striving hard enough to take the next step...or worse yet, shying away from that next step.

He wants to experience success, but it's an equal priority to try to keep his team under the radar. You can't have it both ways. In order to take the leap you have to embrace the pressure and expectations that come with it, not run away from them. I'm not convinced he has the necessary attitude and approach to take on that transformation.

If his ultimate goal when he arrived was to make the Irish relevant he’s achieved his objective. If he has no greater aspirations then it’s time to find someone who will aim to take the program higher.