Don't look now, but defense might rest a bit this season for Notre Dame men's basketball

Don’t look now, but defense might rest a bit this season for Notre Dame men’s basketball

Posted by Admin October 11, 2024 Basketball

SOUTH BEND − Think you know?

Think you know what to expect from the Notre Dame men’s basketball team based on last season?

Think you know how second-year head coach Micah Shrewsberry and his revamped roster will roll the second time around?

Think again.

A year ago, survival for the Irish centered almost solely on defense. If Notre Dame was going to have any chance in the Atlantic Coast Conference, it would have to do it first and second and sometimes third with defense. Dig in and guard your guy. Rebound. Run rarely. Score sporadically. The Irish weren’t good enough or talented enough or knowledgeable enough to do everything Shrewsberry wanted to do with his vast offensive playbook.

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All that would have to wait.

Notre Dame wasn’t going to get out in the open floor, wasn’t going to keep teams guessing with an array of out of bounds unders and sideline out of bounds sets. It wasn’t going to fool anyone into thinking it could routinely get to 70, 80, even 90 points. Climbing clear of the 60s often was a struggle for a program that finished 342^nd nationally in scoring (64.0 ppg.), 330^th in field goal percentage (.407) and scored fewer than 70 points in 22 of its 33 games.

Notre Dame had to do it with defense. Even then, it didn’t always do it well while finishing 13-20 overall, 7-13 and tied for 12^th in the ACC. That was then.

This is now, and now for the Irish, which started in the spring, continued through the summer foreign tour of Spain and rolled into preseason fall practice, means offense. It means spreading the floor and flooding it with shooters, with positionless players. Play with four guards and one big? Yep. Play with five perimeter players and no bigs? Maybe. It means getting the ball out quickly – preferably off the rim – and getting down the floor and getting after opponents with a basketball IQ that’s higher than at any time last season.

If last year was about defense for Shrewsberry, this season should be about offense. He’s said so on almost every media occasion. Focus on defense today, Coach? Nah, offense. How about today? Nope. More offense. There was one day when the practice plan centered on defensive accountability. Other than that, it’s been run and score and score and run.

“We’re working on how can we be good right out of the gates offensively,” Shrewsberry said. “What are we going to do to put points on the board. This is a better offensive team (so) you play more skill. You play more shooting.

“You lean to offense a little more, sometimes your defense might suffer. Maybe we’re not the same defensively as we were last year, but I think we’ll be better offensively.”

Better, because the pieces better fit for how Shrewsberry wants to play. The returning seven players from last season better understand what Shrewsberry and his staff are saying. Last year, it was a bunch of blank looks. This year, there are nods. Like, yeah, we can play that way. We want to play that way. Those seven can get the six newbies up to speed on how it all runs.

It’s not going to look like the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s (YouTube it) or even North Carolina’s secondary break, but it’s going to look different. It’s going to feel different.

“It’s going to be a better, fun brand of basketball,” said senior guard Julian Roper.

Notre Dame has worked since spring with a 24-second shot clock. That’s been by design. It’s forced the Irish to get the ball down the court faster, to play faster, to think faster. Those 24 seconds have remained on the board as the team’s two scrimmages – Oct. 26 against Xavier (shhh, that’s a secret) and Oct. 30 at Purdue Fort Wayne (that one’s open to the public) near.

The Irish have embraced their new offensive identity, but it took a few practice periods to completely comprehend. Wait, Coach wants us to run and pass and score and shoot and score? That’s a total role reversal from last season’s grind-it-out way to play.

“I’m not going to lie; it was a little shocking at first,” junior power forward Kebba Njie said of the style shift. “A lot of these guys know Coach Shrews only for defense (but) he’s an offensive mastermind. When he told us that, we were ready to work.”

At least one Irish listened to the change of play and pace and was nonplussed. Defense is important for the head coach, but it’s offense where the guy has earned his basketball bones.

“He’s a defensive-minded coach, but really, he loves offense just as much,” sophomore guard Braeden Shrewsberry said of his father. “At Penn State, they were kind of similar – defensive-minded that first year then the next, they had a really good offense.

“I knew this was coming.”

Penn State ranked 227^th in the nation in field goal percentage (.432) and 318th in scoring offense (64.6 ppg.) during Coach Shrewsberry’s first season in 2021-22. The next year, which included a trip to the NCAA tournament, Penn State ranked 69^th in field goal percentage (.463) and 158^th (fourth in the Big Ten) in scoring (72.2 ppg). That spring, he was at Notre Dame.

Sophomore point guard Markus Burton digested the new philosophy and breathed a long, deep sigh of relief. Under Shrewsberry’s slow-down style, it was often Burton bringing the ball up the floor, Burton deciding, Burton shooting and Burton scoring.

During media day, Burton rattled off nearly a half dozen teammates who can initiate offense. He doesn’t have to be the main handler, the main scorer, the main anything. He can be a piece of the puzzle.

Burton will be better because the Irish collectively will be better.

“That’s truly a blessing,” Burton said. “It’s a confidence that I have in myself and my teammates for them to show the world how good they are too.”

Show them by cutting and passing and doing something the Irish didn’t always do well last season: scoring.

While they’re at it, maybe …

Winning.

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on Twitter: @tnoieNDI