Notre Dame basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry spoke on Tuesday afternoon.
Opening statement:
“Marcus's injury – we put out having surgery on Wednesday, no timetable for his return. My immediate thoughts as a coach, my job is to be a coach of Notre Dame's basketball team, but that's one of my sons. That's family right there. What we've gone through together, I'm immediately heartbroken for him to have to go through this situation, another injury, after fighting through another injury last year. So all my thoughts are to him, and getting himself better and healthy, and handling this.
“He's going to have us as a basketball family. He's going to have this Notre Dame community supporting him, but he's a local kid as well. This is a time for everybody in this community to wrap your arms around him, just to help him through. The hardest thing for these kids is when you deal with an injury, everything changes for you as a basketball player. You don't put all of what we do into who we are, but sometimes that's their identity, for kids who are going through this.
“I think it's a rallying cry for all of us to really help him, especially now, early on after this surgery, to get him mentally back. We're going to be there for him. We're going to help him and our focus is on helping our group and helping our team, but also being there for him and being strong for him during this time.”
On the team being more prepared to handle Markus Burton being out:
“Timetable and the schedule-wise as well, right? He gets hurt the first game in Vegas and we play immediately the next day, and then two days later, and then we fly home from Vegas to play two days later. There was no stopping point there at all. I think we've had the rest of the TCU game, and we had a couple off days. Now we have a couple practices.
“There is a chance to kind of reset in the moment for us. I think we are better equipped with this team to handle it. You never want this or wish this, but I think we are better equipped to handle it. Now it's just about going and doing it, but I think the schedule helps us a little bit more this year.”
On building on what they did last week:
“We don't want to lose any momentum from our group and how we're playing and what we're doing. It's all hands on deck with our guys. People's roles don't really shift. The time they play might shift, but you still need to be a star in what you do. That's what we're looking for for our group. But, no, we want to keep building. We have an entire season ahead of us that we're locked in on playing.
“We have the game on Wednesday, and I told our guys it's the most important game of our season. It's the next game. The moment you take your eyes off of that and start looking at what happened behind you, that's when you take your eyes off the road and something bad happens. We're focused on what's immediately ahead of us. That starts with our game tomorrow.
“And it's a good team, right? They're 6-3. They're number one in the country in three-point field goal attempt volume. Those are the most dangerous teams you play in the non-conference, the ones that just shoot it freely and that's what they do. They've already gone on the road and won at Iowa State. They've beaten some good teams. All of our focus is on doing what we need to do to beat Idaho tomorrow.”
On what he learned about his team during the TCU game:
“Just our resilience showed. We talked about it after Missouri – sometimes you just need a little bit of good things to happen to kind of fortify your belief. I think us doing that against Missouri, coming back and getting a tough win down the stretch, it helped us in the TCU game. Just being able to use every experience possible to help us win the next game.
“All of those wins, all of these experiences, the loss to Ohio State, the win versus Bellarmine, like, all of those help us each time we step out and play. I was happy with our guys for how they responded, how they came back and fought to get that win on Friday.”
On G Cole Certa:
“We want to be a program that is built on our retention and built on our internal development. I think guys are making strides and getting better. It might not always be something outwardly, right? ole's getting a lot of talk about the threes that he's made in the last two games. One area, like, his defense has really improved. He's guarding people and getting stops and sliding his feet and, like, chasing shooters, little things like that. I think you're seeing areas of improvement from him, but from a lot of our guys that it's not always outwardly and easily seen. Our guys are really working to keep improving in that. That's going to help us throughout the year.”
On eliminating a let down game againt Idaho:
“You should have been our meeting yesterday. You haven't done anything if you're sitting back thinking about what you've done previously. Our goals coming into this season wasn't to beat Missouri TCU and then shut it down for the rest of the year. We've got to keep getting better, and this is the next opportunity for us to get better.
“We are locked in on every opponent that we play. We might not play great, but that doesn't mean we're not locked in on this game, and we are locked in on this game. We'll be ready to go.”
On what he saw from Jalen Haralson running point guard with Burton out:
“It's pretty natural for him. That's what he's done his whole career is play point guard. It was easy for him to slide over and just start doing that. He's practiced it and he's done it in the games. I think the greatest area of growth I thought our team did against TCU was we as a group attacked them the right way. Every game you go in is different. If you've got the best team in the country, then you're going to play your style, your system. It doesn't matter who you play. You can just do the same thing, and it's going to work.
“We're not the most talented team in the country, but we have good players. We also have guys who can think the game now, and from game to game it might look different. There's things that aren't going to change. You've got to take care of the ball. You've got to rebound the basketball. We've got to share the ball. Those things are never going to change, but how we get to those might change from game to game. Looking at how TCU guarded us, this is the specific way how we wanted to attack, and I thought our guys did a great job of doing that over and over and over again in that game. It might look different against Idaho because they're going to guard different than TCU.
“This group, I think, can find what it is to help us create an advantage and then do it. That's where we've got to be really good as a group. I think that's where Jalen, as a freshman, was able to do that kind of seamlessly in that game. Now he's got to be able to keep doing it from game to game. So a lot of time spent watching film, a lot of time working with coaches, but a lot of time with him and our other guys really digesting the game plan and executing it.”
On Haralson’s growth this season:
“He had such a rough start from his first game getting injured, where now you lose almost like two games with him, two and a half games. But I think he's getting more and more confident in how he's playing, how to attack, what to do next. His effort's been fantastic, and that's what you don't know from a five-star talent. You don't know how they're going to deal with coaching. You don't know how they're going to deal with playing hard. He allows me to coach him. He allows me to get on him if I don't think he's playing hard. But you don't have to. He's doing a lot of things for our team. He's trying to guard people on the defensive end. He's working his tail off doing that. He's going to the glass on both ends.He's handling the ball. He's doing a lot for our team. He's being coached, and he's doing it the right way, and he's a great teammate.
“That part of it, he's doing everything we've asked. Now, I think as we keep going, the game will start slowing down for him. He'll start to see everything better, and we can use him in some different ways because the game is starting to take a little bit of a step down for him.”
On if it’s reassuring to see the team response with Burton on the floor:
“I thought our guys early on, I thought the rest of the first half, we were a little bit out of sorts, but it was kind of the immediate afterthought, right? They don't get a chance to really see him or talk to him or do anything, right? He gets injured, then he gets taken off the court. The game keeps going and that's their brother. That's somebody they fight with every single day, and to not know what's happening, it kind of takes their mind off everything.
“I think being able to get back in the locker room and see him, he was in the locker room at halftime, and those guys got a chance to see him and talk to him, and him coming back out and being on the bench in the second half, I thought it was a little bit reassuring for them of like, OK, yes, he's injured, but he's okay, and now we can continue on. When we got back to that, I thought we really fought, we really competed, I thought we executed it in a good way. Now we just have to keep that going.”
On the team knowing they can win without Burton:
“Yeah, we don't want to. We just have to do it in different ways now. We're always trying to seek advantages on offense, and that's one advantage that's taken away. Now we just have to do it in a different way. That's the one good thing is like t's going to test us as coaches, right? You can't be cookie-cutter, right? You can't just, like I said, we're not the most, the Dukes of the world, the Kansas of the world that we're going to out-talent you, no matter who you are, right?
“We're going to have to coach, we're going to have to scheme, we're going to have to figure it out, and our guys, I think. We've got a bunch of basketball players. We're going to get you guys who love it. We've got a bunch of guys that might end up coaching at some point in time, unfortunately for them. I think they enjoy this kind of process of how do we win the next game.”
On Carson Towt bringing toughness to the team:
“You feel so much better when you're walking down the street and your big brother's with you, right? He just gives off that feel to some guys that, like, everything's going to be okay, right? Like, you know, I'm walking next to him, I feel a little bit tougher because he's next to me because if anything breaks out, like, there he is. Like, I can start it. That's how it is. And that toughness, that belief, that attitude, like I said, is rubbed off on other guys.
“He's been great for us. Sometimes it's on the court and necessary, but sometimes it's just in the locker room. Sometimes it's just in pregame warm-ups, right? Sometimes it's in practice. Like, what he does for our group, the energy that he brings to them, but the toughness and the belief has been, like, very, very helpful for us.”
On Logan Imes:
“I think he's the ultimate guy that's just stayed with it, kept fighting, kept competing. This spring I painted about as grim of a picture as possible for him. He said, as long as you believe in me, I'm, like, that's all I care about. The way that he just kind of went about his business the rest of the spring through the summer, through the fall, even in tough moments that he's had.
“He didn't play great in the first half against Missouri. He's had different times throughout. But when it gets to the end of games, he's a dude that I trust. He's going to really sit in a stance and guard and fight and compete. He's not scared of the moment to take a big shot. Even if he hadn't taken a shot the whole game, it swings his way because of the time and what he's done and put in, like, he's not afraid to take a big shot in those moments.
“He's going to do his assignment, right? He ended up down there on David Punch for game, right? He switched the ball screen. Now he's guarding their best player in the post. It just gets physical with him. It doesn't let him get a layup. So, like, just having guys like that, like he's, I've said it multiple times, he's a program guy, and program guys help you win. Guys who are preaching your message in the locker room and on the court, those guys help you win. They help your culture.”
On if he ever got a good view of what happened to Burton:
“Not really. That's the first thing when I get on the bus or on the plane and I get the video of the game, that’s the first thing you go look at. But no, really just kind of a freak injury, which is unfortunate for him. You guys were watching, he was really hitting his groove, right, coming off of a double-double against Missouri with ten assists. He had six points and five assists, no turnovers in nine minutes. He was really peaking in how he was playing.
“I talked about it with Jalen, the game was starting to slow down for him now at this point in time in the season. I feel bad for him because he was about to take off. He was really about to take off. But, no, there's no real evidence of what it was, just a freak injury that happened, unfortunately, for him. He'll recover from it. He'll be better for it, and I can't wait to see, you know, what's next for him.”
On if he reaches out to Marcus Freeman about the CFB Playoff snub:
“Playing on Friday allows you to go recruiting Saturday. Most of our staff got out and went recruiting. I was at an all-day event. Sunday, I'm cashed, man. I was tired. I didn't play, you know, recruit all day Saturday. I'm cashed. But Sunday, I'm like I'm going to get a chance to sleep in. I set my alarm, right? I made sure that, like, at noon I was watching it. I watched it, right?
“Just like anybody else, like, it ruined my day. I'm a fan too, right? I've been a Notre Dame fan since a little kid. It ruined my day just like everybody else.I have had a chance to talk to Marcus since then. You don't know what to say in those moments, right? He and I have gone through with his coaches. I feel for him as a fellow Notre Dame coach. But it's more about the kids, the players, right? Those are the guys that, like, you feel bad for, right? Not to say I don't feel bad for him. The kids are the ones that you feel bad for.
“I hope I get a chance to see those guys again The guys who are leaving. Just to tell them how much I appreciated watching them. I appreciated what they've done for Notre Dame in the football program. Shout out to those guys because they did have a tremendous season.”
On if the football season is a lesson for his team on the importance of each game:
“It was something that Coach (Matt) Painter talked to me about earlier this year before our season started. We met with our guys and talked about how important different games are. Right? You can't talk about how important the Idaho game is on Tuesday and that guy's, like, got a feeling of tenseness. But when you do it in the offseason in the fall before we start practice and lay it out, here is what is your path to an NCAA tournament berth look like and show them. There and there, like, these games are really important.
“Our guys know the importance of each game and takes. We play a longer season. They play a shortened season, but we play a longer season. Our guys know the importance of every single game that we play. But we also do it way before and don't talk about it the day of. And then hey're, like, no, I'm nervous and can’t make a shot or something. We're locked in on what we need to do to have a successful season.”
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