Moments after Marquette thumped Notre Dame 78-59 in an uncompetitive laugher in December, Golden Eagles coach Shaka Smart pulled Fighting Irish coach Micah Shrewsberry aside and whispered in his ear.
“You guys remind me of my group from a few years ago. Now keep ’em,” was Smart’s message, Shrewsberry recalled this week.
Shrewsberry doesn’t take losing all that well so it may have taken a while for Smart’s encouraging words to sink in, but in time it served as a valuable reminder that good things usually take time.
Time was something Shrewsberry was promised by the Notre Dame brass just over 18 months ago, when he was hired after coaching Penn State for two seasons and leading the Nittany Lions to the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 2023. It wasn’t just lip service. A seven-year contract backed it up. Quick rebuilds don’t just happen right away at a place like Notre Dame where rigorous academic standards make it harder than ever to get transfers through admissions.
“This isn’t a place where it’s going to be a transfer-heavy acceptance rate,” Shrewsberry told CBS Sports. “It’s unique here and different.”
Shrewsberry, a former assistant for Matt Painter at Purdue, hoped to emulate that build-from-scratch gameplan utilized by the Boilermakers and Marquette that doubled down on high school recruiting while numerous competitors invested more and more resources into the transfer portal.
“It’s an old-school approach,” Shrewsberry said.
It’s working. Notre Dame inked the No. 26 recruiting class in 2024, headlined by Sir Mohammed, a top-50-ranked, 6-foot-7 guard who has the pass-dribble-shoot attributes that Shrewsberry’s system craves. The burgeoning 2024 class was just the start.
Notre Dame, the same program that went 13-20 last year and got 20-pieced by The Citadel, currently owns the No. 1-rated recruiting class in 2025, according to 247Sports. Five-star, two-way wing Jalen Haralson…
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