Mike Brey Notebook
Mike Brey is excited about the pair of prospects the Notre Dame basketball program added with the opening of the Early Signing Period on Wednesday, but the Irish head coach isn’t finished working yet.
“We feel they’re great fits for us,” Brey said of 2020 power forwards Matt Zona and Elijah Taylor, who sent their National Letters of Intent to South Bend on Wednesday.
“We keep on recruiting in 2020. What is there, still seven days left in the early signing period?”
Notre Dame is still pursuing five-star Maryland center Hunter Dickinson, who remains unsigned, but on Wednesday, Brey was talking Taylor and Zona.
“I-95 guys, two guys who have played a lot of basketball back there,” he said of Zona and Taylor, who are from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively.
“Both of these kids have great physical frames already. It’s not like we’ve got to try to put 20 pounds on them for them to get ready to play like we did with a Rob Kurz and Nate (Laszewski), who is in that kind of evolution right now.”
Both will arrive in South Bend physically capable of surviving college basketball, according to Brey.
“Elijah Taylor is going to walk in the weight room and he looks like he’s been lifting,” the coach said. “He’s built now. He’s a man. Zona’s got a great weight on him, he probably can tune it up a little bit, but it’s not like he’s got to get stronger to play against the big guys in the ACC. They’re both physical kids.”
Brey added, “There’s a toughness about both of them.”
There was a clear emphasis on big guys this cycle for the Irish.
“We feel really good about our young guards and what people forget is we’ve got Cormac Ryan sitting out,” Brey explained, referring to this summer’s transfer. “He was a Top 100 player and starting point guard at Stanford last year. We didn’t really need guards.”
Assistant coach Ryan Ayers was “the point man” on both Taylor and Zona while Brey said he watched each of them at a high school event in Philadelphia in late-June.
“With Taylor, it was right away,” Brey recalled. “With Zona, it was ‘Let me just watch him one more time.’”
After continuing to monitor Zona closely, he decided he was a fit.
“He’s the kind of guy we get, we get him in our system and grow him,” said Brey.
While the ACC and the new practice facility caught each of their eyes, Brey believes the academics at Notre Dame played as big a role as anything.
“They knew the education and the degree.”
TAYLOR BRINGS BACK MEMORIES OF TY: Brey almost seems convinced he’s coached Taylor before and assured reporters they’d understand what he means soon enough.
“You will see his body, see how he moves and then talk to him and go, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Ty Nash,’” Brey said.
That was certainly the reaction he had when he first saw Taylor in a layup line.
“He moves like him, he’s lefty, he’s got a great build,” Brey continued. “He’s got a glowing personality. I’m really excited about him.”
Brey is convinced Taylor will succeed off the court at Notre Dame.
“He is a really gifted student,” he said of Taylor. “He’s a very creative kid. I think certainly a degree from this place was very important.”
As soon as the Irish offered Taylor, it was obvious his support system in Philadelphia recognized what kind of opportunity he’d been given.
“We had a lot of support in his high school,” he said. “For them, Imhotep Charter, which is a really gifted public charter school in Philly, to have a kid at Notre Dame meant a lot to that school and that program.”
Brey, who called Imhotep “a machine,” also noted his excitement about getting a kid from a city school in Philadelphia.
TIMING WORKS WITH ZONA: As he did with Taylor, Brey compared Zona to a recent pair of Irish bigs.
“A little bit like a (John) Mooney and a Martin Geben, but he can shoot it out there for a big guy,” he said. “Skilled, big hands, Bergen Catholic kid, plays in a good league.”
The coach is convinced Zona, who they offered this past summer, would have been a more highly-sought recruit within months.
“If he would have signed late, I bet he would have had a lot more people on him,” said Brey. “It was pretty much Penn State, us, Rutgers for the most part.
“He’s not going to play above the rim, he’s not Mooney that way. He doesn’t bounce up there. But he’s got great hands, he’s good with the ball and he’s a big who can shoot it out there and he’s tough.”
Brey called Kurz “another good comparison.”
“Because he’s a big guy who can shoot it,” he continued. “He handles the ball well. He’s really good with his right and left hand. He’s crafty. Again, the body is there.
“Our feeling was, again, another four-year investment, the kind of guys we get who are just going to get better. He understands he’s got to come out here and compete to get playing time.”
OPEN SCHOLARSHIPS MEAN FIRE & FLEXIBILITY: As he said, Brey intends to continue recruiting the Class of 2020 – “We still have scholarships to give,” – but that’s not the only way to make use of those open scholarships.
“We’ll look at transfers and just keep on digging,” he added. “Every day is a new day in recruiting. You just never know.”
That’s what happened back in June, when associate head coach Rod Balanis informed Brey that Ryan had entered the transfer portal.
“I was like, ‘What?’” Brey recalled. “Thankfully, I still had his number in my contacts so I could call him right away. I was the first guy to call.
“You play with fire a little bit with your numbers, but you have something to give to a really gifted guy…That’s why you always want to have a couple in your back pocket.”
It’s obvious Brey prefers the flexibility and more than he fears the flames.
“If something emerges, we can react and take a transfer,” he said.
While Mooney, TJ Gibbs and Rex Pflueger exhaust their eligibility after the season, both Nikola Djogo and Juwan Durham have the option of returning for an additional year next season.
“There’s no question (Juwan) and Nik would both like to come back,” he said. “Nik would like to be in that Masters program that Rex is in and I think Juwan has kind of found a niche here.”
But they could elect to go different routes as well.
“If they graduate, they have the flexibility to do what they want to do as far as playing professionally and make some money or be a graduate transfer. I think we just want to make sure we have enough bodies to go.”
CORMAC ALMOST BACK: Ryan hasn’t been fully cleared yet after offseason surgery to correct a sports hernia. He won’t be able to compete in games this season, but has been playing one-on-one recently against Ayers and Brey expects him to be a full practice participant soon.
“I think we’ll turn him loose in practice next week, which will be great.”