Notre Dame basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry spoke following Sunday's loss to Purdue Fort Wayne.
On when he sensed it was going to be hard to get over the hump vs. Purdue Fort Wayne:
“It’s such a rocky week with finals. I'm not making excuses, but how we got back to practice, we had our normal two-day rhythm to get back, and we started on Friday. When we did a competitive drill and the white team, the non-starters, beat the blue team 19-0, just showed me these guys aren’t locked in to where they're supposed to be in our preparation, right?
“You talk about it, you talk about it, you talk about it, but total lack of leadership and that starts with me, right? Maybe I didn't talk about it enough. So that's on me that, like, we came out and played that way.”
On if he might have talked about finishing the last two games of the non-conference season too much:
“No. I talk about it more with you guys than I do with them, right? It's not like I'm in the locker room telling them about this. We talked about this stuff before the season started and we talked about this stretch here before we played Evansville. That was the last mention of it.
“Our message was let's finish what we've started in the non-conference season, and, unfortunately, we left too early.”
On how Notre Dame can get past this loss and back to earning respect:
“You've got to get back to playing the right way and playing hard, right? Whoever booed me on the way out, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it, every single bit of it because it was deserved. It was deserved by us in how we played and how I coached them. We're not going to quit after tonight.
“What it did is ruin my Christmas. I'm going to watch this film, and there ain't no Christmas in my house. There might be for everybody else in the family, but I have a huge chip on my shoulder. We got to get this back.
“Starting tomorrow, I'm going to watch this game. I'm going to figure out how we're better, and then I'm going to start watching Stanford. We got to go win two games, man. We got to go win two games. We gave one up. We got to go get it back.”
On what he should have done differently as a coach on Sunday:
“Make sure we're ready to go early. Or try different – maybe try different lineups. I don't know. I tried Matt McClellan. I tried different guys. Make sure everybody's ready to go on Friday and Saturday before we even get to Sunday. But within all of this, like, let's not discount them. They played really well.
“Corey Hadnot is a good player, and he got it going. Their guards scored the majority of their points, and we just struggled to keep them under wraps. When we did get some juice, they made a couple of tough shots. Contested shots, things like that. They made plays. We didn't play well. We didn't show up. We were supposed to do what we were supposed to do. But I’m going to make sure I don't discredit them and how they played. They made big plays down the stretch. We just have to be better to not be in that position.”
On the guard play from Purdue Fort Wayne:
“That's what they do. Right. Those guys are averaging 80-something points a game as a team. But those dudes are averaging 50-plus together. They got three really tough guards. We went through personnel twice this week to let our guys know how important guarding those guys were.
“Then you start to put too much focus on them now. Then the four man gets open and throws a couple threes in, which we got to be better at knowing how we take those away. You focus so much on those guys because they get going, and now you lose somebody else. He helps spur them on when maybe they're in a rut or we've guarded their guards better. Now we let him get loose and then it's a cycle again.”
On losing the turnover battle 15-8:
“They're top 30 in the country in steals. They do that to everybody. But some of their steals, some of their turnovers were self-inflicted. We were throwing the ball to them. I don't know if everything was what they did. They're an aggressive, defensive team, so some of it was in the first half. I thought early on some of our turnovers were self-inflicted. We were stepping out of bounds. That's like basic stuff, one-on-one.
“We got to clean some of those up. Some of the turnovers where you're getting shots, like we dominated the offensive glass, and I always say to them, we can't rebound your turnovers. Just put it on the backboard and give us a chance to get it back. We didn't do that enough. 15 turnovers kill you.”
On the lack of leadership and what points guys needed to step up:
“By me. By me, not our guys. I'm never going to talk about our guys like that. Lack of leadership from me. I need to get them ready to go and that's it. It stops there.”
On Logan Imes:
“He always has a level of compete, right? It doesn't matter if you're playing Fort Wayne or you're playing Purdue. He hasn't gotten the opportunities that other people have gotten his whole career. Now, he's getting a chance and he's going to take advantage of it. He's going to play hard. He's going to try and compete. He's going to do what he's supposed to do. That's something that for him as a junior, that's really important.
“I thought we found certain groups that did it. I thought him and Braeden (Shrewsberry), I thought they competed, but they've also been here. They've been through a lot of losses. They've lost a lot of buy games. So they know what it is. They know what it takes.
“You got to lean on those guys more, but that's where now some of your seniors, some of your – even your younger guys, they have to know what it takes to win on a daily basis. That's where I thought as a total group where I thought we kind of let the ball drop a little bit.”
On attacking the rim more when shots weren’t falling:
“You want to attack, right? They had 14 fouls in the first half. It just tells you we weren't being the aggressor on offense. We weren't getting in the paint. Sometimes it doesn't always – getting in the paint doesn't always lead to a foul, or a two-point shot. But how they guard you, they swarmed the ball in the paint. So now you got to kick it. You got to spray it. And now if I'm not making shots, now I got to attack another closeout because they're running at me because I can't shoot. I attack that and you might get a two-pointer there, right, because they're now scrambling and not in the right places to guard.
“That's why I kept wanting to attack, wanting to get in the paint. We did it in the second half, right? They got a lot of fouls early and we got to the free throw line. But you need to do that early in the game when it's – before it's too late. Right before you get down nine, like start attacking early. Get closer to the bonus and now if you're struggling to make shots, get a couple of free throws to kind of get yourself going, get your team going.”
On if there were any positives from Sunday:
“No. Yeah, the positive is we'll be ready to go on the 26th. I know that much. But we gave it up, right? This is a game we needed to win and we didn't. So you have to go and get it somewhere else. So our guys need to be motivated. I'm motivated to go get it somewhere else. I know that much. So that's – I guess that's a positive. I hate losing, though. You guys know that.”
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