Just about this time each year for the last 25 years, Notre Dame head basketball coach Mike Brey is either pounding the pavement out recruiting, and/or working with administrators to bring prospective players to campus during the spring for official visits.
This year?
“I’m sitting here in my office, looking across campus, and it’s a ghost town. There is absolutely nobody around,” Brey said Tuesday during an exclusive phone interview with BlueandGold.com.
Similarly to every other college coach and student-athlete in the country, Brey has his annual routines and everyday life put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.
Brey, 61, is doing his best to handle recruiting duties through online tools such as FaceTime, Skype, Zoom and other new-fangled electronic means that allow coaches and recruits to visit “face to face.”
But with no in-person visits — and frankly, not much to sell to a recruit during this unprecedented and unpredictable time — Brey is concentrating more right now on his current guys than any future ones.
Online classes replaced traditional coursework at Notre Dame this week, and Brey understands that mixing college kids with distance and an independent course structure isn’t necessarily a recipe for scholastic success.
“Nobody is in trouble academically, but this is a strange new world,” Brey said. “We don’t have at our fingertips the tutors and academic support and all of that. My biggest thing is staying on these guys academically so we got everybody eligible for next season.
“We can’t afford to lose a guy that’s coming back.”
And while the Irish coaches and academic support staff are doing all they can to engage and assist the players from a distance, Brey called this a teaching moment and an important chance for his guys to “grow up and be men” and to put the time in.
“Right now, if you’re not a young man and can’t handle your business, you’re going to fall on your face and that may be a good message for some of these kids,” Brey said. “Handle your stuff from where you are and take it seriously.
“We’re going to be calling, we’re going to be checking, but we can’t hold your hand.”
After playing his college basketball in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Brey held nothing back when he spoke about today’s players from an older-school perspective.
“For our guys, they’ve got it pretty darn good. They’ve got great resources, great help academically, nutrition, strength training,” Brey said. “It’s almost to the point, in my opinion, sometimes I think we hold their hand too much. I almost think this could be a good life lesson for our current guys where they have to handle their own business.
“You know what, [basketball athletics counselor] Pat Holmes isn’t going to come by practice anytime soon and say, ‘Hey, did you get that paper in today?’ It’s time to grow up and do it.”
In an effort to better manage and monitor their group of eight returning players — currently scattered from Maryland and New York in the east, to Florida and New Orleans in the south, to Ontario, Canada, in the north — the Irish assistant coaches were given specific players to keep close contact with, for reasons beyond academics.
“It’s a long time not to be in their routine back here so we need to keep an eye on the guys, keep guys’ heads up,” Brey said. “This is a new kind of stress mentally and psychologically on them. They’ve been home for almost two weeks and I’m sure they’re already bouncing off the walls.”
With gyms closed and access to weight training facilities limited at best, staying physically sound is another difficult challenge for the players, many of whom are quarantined to their homes, waiting for some unknown return date to normalcy.
“My hope is I’ll see them for summer school in June, that’s the hope,” Brey said. “But you know, that may not happen either. I may not see them until Labor Day.”
Brey insightfully warned his team March 12, immediately after the entire basketball postseason was wiped out mid-stream, that this COVID-19 situation was unpredictable and could keep students home and off-campus for an extended time period. Prentiss Hubb lightened the mood after Brey’s serious message when the sophomore guard said he might get a job during his time back home in Maryland.
“I don’t know where you’re going to get a job in this atmosphere, but that was so refreshing,” Brey said. “Athletes used to go back home and get summer jobs and learn how to work. Now, we got them in summer school, and they get room and board, and they get a [stipend] check, it’s a good life, man.”
And a different era.
“I would go home in the summers and work basketball camps and help at a swimming pool and then play basketball at night,” Brey added. “I never took one summer school class. Now, it took me five damn years to graduate because of it, but I still somehow stole that degree!”
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