SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A little over a week removed from the Notre Dame men’s basketball team’s three-game, 10-day tour of Spain, Irish head coach Micah Shrewsberry was eager to plot what comes next as an encore for year 2 of his regime.
Turns out, some of the key pieces of that vision head already got an early jump on it.
Free to go home upon arrival back in the States late on Aug. 15 and reconvene next week when fall-semester classes start, a followed that timetable. Yet most came back early to work on their own.
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“When I walked in the gym Wednesday, I'm like, ‘Man, [Julian] Roper’s down there shooting.’ And then right after him, [son] Braeden was in the gym. And then Tae [Davis] came in, and then Markus [Burton] was in. And then later on that day, [grad transfers] Burke [Chebuhar] and Mush [Matt Allocco], they were in. Like, Kebba [Njie] has been here.
“Some of those guys stuck around, because they wanted to keep going. It's been cool to see, like yesterday, there were so many guys that were in the gym. And the freshmen aren't back. They all get back today, but a lot of the older guys are here and they're back, and they're back in the gym. And they're itching to get going again.”
Itching to improve on a 13-20 overall record and 7-13 ACC mark the Irish fashioned in the first season of the post-Mike Brey Era. And itching to show that the supporting cast for Burton — the reigning ACC Rookie of the Year — is deeper and more skilled, especially on the offensive end.
The Irish, who ranked 342nd nationally in scoring offense last season out of 351 Division I teams (64.0 ppg), averaged 81 points in their three victories against second- and third-division pros in Spain, who were thrown together to form all-star teams of sorts.
“One of the dudes was 38,” Shrewberry said Friday during a 40-minute sit-down with reporters. “All these guys were men. We weren't playing kids. We weren't playing high school-age or college-age guys. We were playing professionals.
“Early on in practice, I said our creativity as a group needs to go up. Can't be as robotic. So, if somebody does something, it's like, you have to have an answer for it immediately. You can't wait ’til a timeout. You can't wait ’til I tell you. Our creativity has to go up.
“They [the opponents] forced our creativity to go up, because there's a lot of things that we saw defensively from these teams that we weren't prepared for. And we still had to handle them in a moment's notice.”
Burton did the best job of handling it, with a team-leading 19.3 points per game, to go along with 6.7 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 3.7 steals. And he did it playing no more than 25 minutes in any game. Same for the rest of the available roster, as Shrewsberry sought to balance out the playing time and get game exposure for everyone.
“We played so many different lineups, like we were subbing five in, five out every five minutes,” Shrewsberry said. “I wanted to see one group play together for five minutes, [another] group play together for five minutes. So, we never really had — like, I don't know if we have a quote, unquote, best group right now. We're trying to figure out what that is. But [for] these guys, it's hard to get in a rhythm when you do that. And it also asks you to do certain things.
“I think when we get back together, we’ve got to talk about: What do we need to be to be a good team? We didn't do any defensive stuff. We did the basics. So, we’ve got to drill it in where we're a tough, disciplined defensive team like we were [last season]. That can't change. That always has to be us.
“But then offensively, we need to continue to play at a great pace. And I told our guys, if we can play at a great pace, I can play more of you. And we know, I don't need to play very many of you, right? So, I think that's kind of the carrot.”
There’s still no official date to the start of the season, and only a Dec. 3 date with Georgia appears at all on the schedule so far, but the work ramps up again next week for this team on the practice court.
Here’s a snapshot of scenarios — before, during and after Spain — that help tell the story of where the Irish stand:
Missing pieces and playing catch-up
Two of the players who did not get to play at all on the trip were grad transfer forward Nikita Konstantynovskyi and freshman backup point guard Sir Mohammed.
Konstantynovskyi, a native of Ukraine, stayed back in the U.S. because of complications with visas to travel internationally and for safety reasons related to that. Mohammed made the trip, but hadn’t been cleared medically long enough to push into the rotation coming back from a minor knee injury that had sidelined him most of the summer.
“He fell funny in one of our drills. It's nothing structural,” Shrewsberry said. "I don't know technically what it was. It just took time for him to get back. And then by the time he got back healthy, it was no rush to bring him back.”
But the 6-6 son of former NBA player Nazr Mohammed and the Rivals No. 62 player overall nationally in the incoming freshman class does have some catching up to do. Yet even injured, Mohammed found a way to impress his new coach.
“Some people are hurting, they're just like out of the picture. They're out of the equation. They might be sitting on the bench next to a coach, but he's involved with his teammates. He's around his teammates. He's doing stuff. That's who he is as a player.
“The first thing is that's going to stand out and how we use him the best is his mind and [how] he sees the game. You glance over and see him, like he's locked in. There's some people, you look over there and there's cartoon birds flying around their head, like they ain't paying no attention to what you're talking about, Coach. ‘Like, I'm hurt. Why do I need to pay attention?’
“He was locked in on every word that I was saying. And then when I'd go and ask him about it, you can see it processing in his mind. But the other thing is we're doing kind of offensive stations. So, he's sitting in a chair, but he follows his group around. And he was doing the reps in his chair. He's sitting there, catching these shot fakes. He's driving, now he's spinning, and he's seeing the game.
“I'm like, ‘That's different, man.’ Just the detail of it, the process of it. So, he, he's going to be OK. There's no pressure on him, like zero. He doesn’t have to come in and be the best player. We got one [Burton]. The little dude can score, like he can get buckets.
"We’ve got other people. And I think whenever it's time for him to be really good, he's going to be really good. But it doesn't have to be on day 1 if he's not ready for that.”
Like clockwork
In preparation for playing with FIBA rules on the tour, which include a 24-second shot clock, Notre Dame practiced with the faster clock (NCAA men’s hoops plays with a 30-second block) during the spring and all summer.
And because of how well Shrewsberry thought the offense functioned at the quicker pace, the Irish will continue to practice with the 24-second clock for at least the rest of preseason.
“It was an intentional step,” said Shrewsberry, who would have wanted to play faster offensivey even without the FIBA requirement. “I think we're going to be a much better offensive team, because we have much better offensive pieces. Our pace is going to be better, but we need to win possessions in certain ways.
“Like, we need to have more possessions. We need to have more offensive possessions. So, we need to do that through our pace. We didn't do that through [creating opposing teams’] turnovers. Need to do that through offensive rebounding, and I think those things can still get better.
“Practicing with [the 24-second clock], playing with that, but being able to do it versus people that were trying to win too, like that showed us something.”
Net gains and the next step
The object of taking the Spain trip wasn’t just supposed to be about improving the X’s and O’s. It was designed to evolve team chemistry, and mission accomplished.
“If I had to put a togetherness grade with our group, we’re probably be an A,” Shrewberry said. “That's how close I feel that this group is in a short amount of time. Now, we have to get to that on the court.
“And the things I wanted to try to establish was how we wanted to play, the pace that we wanted to play at. You can't cover everything in that short amount of time. Let's go and be ready to play games. Let's go and be ready to function, look like a team. Like, get some aspects in that we want to get in. We did that, and at the same time, we got challenged on some things we weren't ready for, and we probably would have folded last year.”
Like when Burton fouled out in a close game that the Irish had to find a way to win — and did, 76-74 — with their leader on the bench.
“What we struggled with, like we’ve got to combat those things, starting here in the fall,” Shrewsberry said of the next step. “When we do this in the fall, how do we attack switches, on and off the ball? Certain things, like, we have to be great at them for us to be a really good team. So that's where our focus becomes small details of: How do we attack certain people?
“Because offense is not one size fits all. You don't just run one thing unless you have the best talent. But most teams, you can't. You’ve got to be able to adjust. Now, I need these guys to be able to adjust on the fly.
“That requires less of me. Like, I want to do more of my teaching and coaching in practice and let them play it in the game, and then let me help you in the game.”
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