Mike Brey Notebook | Bellarmine Win

Notre Dame basketball coach Mike Brey spoke following the 81-70 win over Bellarmine on Wednesday afternoon. 

On the win: 
"I told our guys when we scheduled them after we lost Syracuse - this will be just as hard of a game as playing against Syracuse in the Carrier Dome, maybe harder because of the grinding offensive possessions they throw at you. It was. We found a way to get out of there. Our zone helped us not chase them as much." 

On 7-man rotation and 2-3 zone:
"It was a little bit of an identity for us as we're still searching and we have those seven guys available now. I don't think Juwan's ankle is bad, by the way. I think he'll be fine a week from tonight.

"I just wanted to get a feel of rotating them. That's only the second time we've done it. We talked about are we a better zone team, especially when we have the two big guys in with Juwan in the middle. I thought we did a really good job of matching up out of it. Maybe we found something - a defensive identity a little bit. We know who we are offensively and we were very efficient offensively today." 

On G Dane Goodwin:
"He is in a great frame of mind. He is attacking and extremely confident. He has teammates that keep telling him to go for it and putting him in great positions.

"Dane Goodwin is playing as good as anyone in our league right now. I kind of almost expect it now in year three." 

On Goodwin setting the tone early:
"I think Dane has been pretty consistent coming out of the gate confident offensively and scoring for us and just going for it. He certainly has the green light from me and I think his teammates give him confidence in him. They get the ball to him in the right spots and tell him to be aggressive." 

On PG Prentiss Hubb:
"I thought Prentiss Hubb quarterbacked an unbelievable game. He didn't force anything, but he made big shots and got the ball to the right people. He got us into our defense."

On Hubb bouncing back:
"I thought Prentiss had a great bounce-back game. I thought he was steady. He only took 11 shots and had 18. He made big threes, but he quarterbacked us and got us into our zone and talked us through it and talked in our huddles."

On C Juwan Durham:
"Big for Juwan. When we play zone, it's a little conducive to him back there in the middle of our zone being active and blocking shots. We started him in the second half and I just like that we had all seven of those guys in the rotation all made huge plays in a win." 

On the need for a game after Syracuse postponed:
"For us to scramble with four cancellations and have seven games under our belt right now - that right there is the win in this whole thing. We've played seven games. Scott Davenport and I go way back. He texted Monday morning even before he knew our Syracuse game was canceled. I kind of thought it was a little divine intervention with a Catholic School checking in on a Catholic School. It's great we got a game and it was a tough game. 

"We needed to play this week after having the rug pulled on us on Monday." 

On schedule for the next week:
"We're going to do dinner at my house tomorrow. They have a tradition where they do a little gift exchange. Always funny and some pretty cool gag gifts. And a little bit of rest tomorrow and Christmas day. Then we can get back into a practice routine this weekend."