Imagine you buried your head in a pile of pillows and hid under the covers in mid-March, deciding to surface only after the college basketball transfer portal stopped spinning in early May.
Only then would I evaluate Notre Dame men’s basketball roster additions/transfers heading into 2024-25.
While you were sleeping, more than 2,000 players entered the portal in search of new and better homes. Players from all the powerful leagues took the leap. They jumped out of the Atlantic Coast Conference. They jumped from all the Big leagues: 10, 12 and East. They jumped out of the Southeastern Conference. They also jumped from a league that once existed but no longer exists: the Pac-12.
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There were guys in the offensive zone and in the defensive zone and guys with experience, all waiting or wanting to be added. A school in a power league had enough runway to make a power move.
Or do what Notre Dame did.
If you finally woke up and paid attention to the portal last week, you discovered that Notre Dame’s three recruits played last year in the Colonial Athletic Conference, the Ivy League and the Patriot League. That’s probably not the plan anyone at Rolfs laid out in January and February. The portal’s potential big splash never materialized.
That’s not a knock on who Notre Dame got, but rather who Notre Dame didn’t get its place in college basketball. If you aim high, you must hit high.
For the second straight spring, the transfer portal has uttered words that Notre Dame men’s basketball fans don’t want to hear. The program, as it currently exists, is not a gateway option for anyone close to the elite.
Maybe it’s because of last season’s losing record. Maybe admissions are too strict. Maybe the NIL selling price is too expensive. Maybe the staff still has no idea what kind of kid Notre Dame gets. Maybe it’s a combination of everything.
Notre Dame had to grow old. She did it. She also had to bring in someone whose skills and advantages at least paralleled Carey Booth, who didn’t like her place on the show and left for Illinois. It was not so.
In March 2024, the frustration on head coach Micah Shrewsberry’s face was obvious as he talked about building a roster that had three scholarship players when he arrived in March 2023. Shrewsberry insisted at the end of that long year (13- 20 overall, 7-13 ACC) that the program couldn’t get this guy or that guy or those guys because too many transfers believed Notre Dame would, in their words, “suck.”
This spring, Shrewsberry promised it would be different. Notre Dame needed people who could help. I needed guys who had done it at the highest level. In basketball terms, he needed assassins. He had to get guys who could help carry a young, inexperienced group that still doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, even with the reigning ACC Freshman of the Year in Markus Burton.
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Notre Dame added someone who played four seasons at Princeton (Matt Allocco), someone whose four-school college career began in junior college (former Monmouth player Nikita Konstantynovskyi) and a career that began in Division III (former forward of Lehigh, Burke Chebuhar).
They also kept Burton, who briefly flirted with the NBA until he was not invited to the Draft combine. That left her no choice but to sit at his home in Mishawaka for a few weeks and then “announce” on Tuesday that he would return for his second season. That was strange, since he never really left.
Spring hasn’t exactly ushered in confidence that next season will be much better. Notre Dame needed two guys. He got some good guys who could help bring the Irish closer to 10-10 in the now 18-team ACC.
Allocco should be the best of the bunch, a likely starter and an experienced voice who will provide leadership, shooting and swagger, all of which were in short supply last season. Perhaps Chebuhar and Konstantynovskyi will have great success. Maybe the staff sees something in them that no one else sees. Is Notre Dame better off today with a still-thin front line than it was last season with power forward Matt Zona transferring?
Did Notre Dame add enough to be better than what it scored (64.0 points per game) last season, when it finished 342nd in the country? Better than last season (40.7 percent) in 330th place? Better at taking care of the ball when he finished 335th in assist-to-turnover ratio (0.81)?
We do not know. These are the cards Notre Dame chose to play. Now hold them. She plays with them.
This transfer portal business is not easy at Notre Dame, a lesson this staff has learned over the past two springs. The fact that all three additions are one-year rentals is further evidence that Shrews and his team have been advised to rebuild it differently.
Build it through several high school recruiting seasons. Build it through player development. Build it up with some smoke and some mirrors. Build it on continuity and culture rather than quick fixes. Build it for the long haul and long term.
This will take time and patience and, eventually, players.
If that happens, maybe when that happens, don’t turn your back on them.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact: (574) 235-6153.
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