Brey: Notre Dame Can Be Tourney Team
Mike Brey knows the optics.
His Notre Dame basketball squad has a half-dozen wins against a bevy of mid-major foes and two losses by a combined 32 points to hoops blue-bloods Maryland and North Carolina, both of which should be eventually battling for No. 1 or 2 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.
Do not, however, count out the Fighting Irish from those March Madness aspirations. Even on the heels of a season-ending ACL injury to sophomore spark-plug Robby Carmody suffered in the waning seconds of Wednesday’s 72-51 loss at No. 3 Maryland.
“We talked about that (Thursday), that you can kind of roll into feeling sorry for yourself or you can bounce back and do your thing,” Brey said. “I like how we’ve played here, and that’s where we’re kind of back into that mode of home identity, figuring out how to win here and just trying to get to 1-1 in the league right now.
“I think this group will develop, and I think they’re going to make a run at NCAA Tournament bid, even though we have eight (players). Obviously, we can’t afford any more bodies to go down. But I think we can be in the mix.”
The Fighting Irish (6-2, 0-1 ACC) get a chance to notch their first win against a Power-5 foe Saturday afternoon when Boston College (4-5, 1-0) visits Purcell Pavilion at 2 p.m.
The Eagles already opened with a league win against Wake Forest and have won on the road at South Florida. After a 3-0 start, they’ve lost five of six by a combined 68 points.
Brey expects his largely veteran group to rebound from this week’s adversity.
“God, I mean, (Rex) Pflueger, (T.J.) Gibbs, (John) Mooney, they’ve been around; they have great ownership,” he said. “I think, you know, we certainly got our butts kicked the other night by a good team, but they were more down about Robby’s situation. I think they were really knocked back on their heels, even a little bit yesterday.
“Either you’re going to snap out of it and play, or you’re going to keep getting beat. It’s real simple.”
The same approach goes for Brey’s bench, such as it is. Only three players, including Carmody, got significant bench minutes against Maryland, with both Dane Goodwin and Nate Laszewski on the floor for 25 and 17 minutes, respectively.
Brey doesn’t expect more walk-on tryouts to fill out the roster, but he is counting on walk-on freshman guard Elijah Morgan to fill some spot minutes as Notre Dame moves into the guts of its schedule.
“You’ve got to play all kinds of versions of those eight guys, and also, Elijah has to be ready to play for us,” Brey said of Morgan, a former second-team All-Louisiana selection from New Orleans. “(He) is a good guard. But we’ve got to be ready to play everybody. We’ve always been smart about practice, not overdoing it. But probably have to be more aware.”
Brey also is emphasizing his team is a quarter of a way through its season, and while it does not have a signature win, it also does not have an unexpected loss.
“I don’t want them jumping off any cliffs because we’re 6-2 and we lost to North Carolina and we lost to Maryland,” Brey said. “Certainly, we lost Robby and that’s a loss. He was starting to trend up as a basketball player.
“But I said, ‘Fellas, we’ve got 25 games to play and I think we’ve got pretty good personnel here. Let’s see if we can get to 1-1 in the league and get over yourself a little bit.’”