Mike Brey Notebook | 11.13
Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey spoke on Tuesday afternoon as the Irish prepare for Wednesday's game against Radford.
On starting five:
“I still think we have a lot of guys to play. We’re not going to start the same group we started the other night. We’re trying to figure out how to come out of the gate. We have nine or ten guys we have to get in there.”
On using a different starting five on Wednesday:
“We want to come out of the gate a little bit differently. It’s not anything demotion wise. It’s kind of been a little bit of what we’ve done even during the foreign tour games. It’s a different second half group. It’s not necessarily a demotion but this group has been doing good, and we’ll see where we’re at.”
On a timetable for figuring out starting five:
“It has to play itself out. Hopefully, with this stretch we have - the one thing I talked to them about is it’s a heck of a nine-day stretch from yesterday’s practice through Tuesday’s game next week against Duquesne. We’ll have a much better feel of rotation and who we should start after this stretch.”
On comfort of playing nine or 10 guys:
“I think you can with nine. It’s hard with 10. There’s going to be a stretch during the season where somebody isn’t in the rotation, but he’s a pretty good player, and we have to keep him engaged mentally and physically. That’s our assistants doing extra workouts, videotape and meeting with them because all of a sudden after three weeks, he’s back in there.
“We really haven’t had that. I can’t remember the last time we had that dynamic with our team.”
On competition level increasing and rotation:
“Our practice competition is great. We change jerseys around. It eventually plays itself out. The other thing that’s been great is we’ve been healthy. Everyone has been available to us. Today is practice No. 28 since October 1st. We’ve done a lot together.”
On Radford:
“Radford is really good. I told our guys yesterday that Radford went to the NCAA Tournament and we didn’t. They won a game in the NCAA Tournament and have a nucleus of old guys who won 23 games. It’s a heck of a challenge for us. If we can get it, once you start playing real games, you start to create a resumè good or bad.
“This would be a good win for us if we can get it. We’ve got our hands full. They’ve made 30 threes in two games, so they’re really firing.”