Micah Shrewsberry Notebook | Team Camp
Notre Dame hosted its first team camp of the Micah Shrewsberry era on Thursday and the head coach spoke before the event.
On the importance of setting up the team camp:
“It’s a great way to showcase your program a little bit. You get a chance to get kids on campus. You get a lot of kids on campus with teams. The more people that get a chance to set foot on Notre Dame’s campus is great.
“I was raised on Indiana high school basketball. We also have teams from Ohio, teams from Kentucky and other states that are here. As we keep going and the years go on, I think [we’ll] add more teams, and just giving them a chance to have the exposure to our university and everything else is great.”
On Notre Dame doing team camps in the future:
”Due to space and timing, you gotta keep it to a smaller number. There’s so many people that still wanted to come. I spoke at the Indiana Coaches Convention this spring and there were so many coaches that were like, ‘Are you having the shootout? We want to come and bring our team.’
“It’s something that’s great. I know Indiana does it. Purdue does it. Butler does it. A lot of the teams that do it, we want to add ourselves to the mix because it’s such a great chance to interact with high school coaches and the more people you can bring to our campus is great.
“There might be guys here that have no interest in basketball or doing athletics, but maybe they want to be students at Notre Dame. It gives them a chance to walk around and see campus as well.”
On the importance of Notre Dame continuing to do team camps for the health for the program:
“I think it’s great. We have limited times when we can go out and do stuff and recruit, but any time you get somebody on campus is big. They’re willingly coming and not all of these schools have people that we’re recruiting from - but coaches that are great friends, coaches that want to expose their kids to Notre Dame. I think it’s all helpful and it’s all pivotal, and this is something we’re gonna continue to do every year.”
On if other schools can come to camp:
”You can’t. Other Division I schools can’t come, but there’s a few people here that are kind of writers - guys that do evaluations and other things. Small college coaches can be here. We’ve let those guys know and some of them may end up showing up - some NAIA, Division III or other schools like that. It’s a great time and great opportunity. June is such a great month for these high school kids to gain exposure, travel together and try to get better for their seasons.”
On his experience coaching the FIBA U18 team this spring:
”It was really fun. Being at the trials, having a chance to pick the team, go to Argentina together, spend time there. Like those players are 12 of the best players in the country. You can’t play 12 people, so they’re in different roles, even for myself, Tommy Lloyd was the head coach, so learning his system and learning how he wanted to do things.
“It opened things up for me to learn a different way and a different style. Grant McCasland, the head coach at Texas Tech, and I are both doing scouts and scouting teams. It was a neat experience. It’s been a non-stop kind of spring and summer for me, but it was kind of refreshing because I was just coaching basketball.
On takeaways he learned to help Notre Dame:
”I don’t know. We played with a shorter shot clock. I’m thinking about our summer tour and our guys playing as we start practicing and working out playing with a shorter shot clock this summer with our team. That wasn’t anything new that I hadn’t experienced.
“Just really being around a different group of guys, different group of players, learning and trying to learn the new system of what Coach Lloyd wanted to do. And then really trying to come together and compete and win the gold and represent the USA the right way.”
On if there was anything he learned to help his coaching staff from the experience with other coaches at FIBA:
”It was such a short period. We thought about some different things and done some different things, but I think it’s good while I was gone our guys had a chance to look at some new stuff and think about some new stuff. Now that we’re back together, we can kind of put it into action a little bit.
“I don’t know if anything new will come of it, but it was such a great experience. Looking forward to doing it again next summer.”
On what he’s learned about recruiting to Notre Dame after a year on the job:
”You figure out the ins and outs, right? College basketball is constantly evolving, but you also gotta develop your plan and you gotta stick with your plan. I think I’ve tried to have a plan since I’ve gotten here, and no matter how things shake, you still gotta stay with it. I don’t think you can reinvent things totally.
“There’s small tweaks that you can make, but I don’t think you reinvent things until you have a chance to see, is it working or is it not working. We’re still in that kind of phase. We’re sticking to our plan and this is how we’re doing it. I kind of like where we’re at at this point.”
On the three-man transfer class of Matt Allocco, Burke Chebuhar and Nikita Konstantynovski:
“I think it’s important, especially this week and the next few weeks coming up, for me to get a chance to get on the court with them. Everybody arrived on Sunday. I didn’t even get back until Tuesday, so I haven’t been on the court with those guys yet.
“But who they are as people right now really stands out. The voices that Matt Allocco and Nikita bring - how they talk, immediately is totally different than who we’ve been and who we were last year. You just got older, more experienced guys and I think those two and Burke, that’s what they really add is that experience.
“It’s been a good group. They’ve already started without any prodding from the coaches. They’ve already started doing stuff together immediately when they were here. Everybody arrived on Sunday and then Sunday night, they were at Julian Roper‘s house, watching the Finals together.
“I didn’t tell them to do that. That’s Matt Allocco or Julian Roper, who have never met these other dudes, that are already getting everybody together.
“Because we have this experience together, you’ll see a group that’s closer. Not to say we weren’t close, but this group, intentionally is gonna be closer through their own doings and I’m excited about that.”
On Markus Burton coming back and advice given to him:
“We’re excited about it. Obviously, it’s good for him to test out and see where he stands, where other people view him. You get opportunities to put your name in the draft. You can take your name out twice without losing your eligibility, so it makes sense to do it. Having a great year like that, it makes sense to now get the feedback that he needs to get and then kind of put it into action.
“I told him, ‘I’m always here.’ My door is open, and I’m here for him. I just want to see him have success. We’re fired up to have him. He’s fired up to be here. I’m looking forward to getting all these guys together and having fun.”
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