Intense Madden Games Stoke Competitive Fire For Notre Dame

Rex Pflueger said you don’t really know someone until you fight them.

In this case, the Notre Dame men’s basketball team chemistry isn’t being forged with hand-to-hand combat. No, it’s the countless hours spent off the court playing video games — specifically Madden — that has brought the Fighting Irish closer together.

“When people are getting mad at each other, I feel that we get closer,” Pflueger said at Notre Dame’s media day this week. “I feel that builds trust between the team, and once you have trust, you can do amazing things.”

According to those that watch or participate, the contests can get very intense.

Minutes before members of the media entered the team’s lounge for media day interviews, senior wing V.J. Beachem said a particularly hostile game was being played between himself and Pflueger.

Beachem got the best of the sophomore wing that day, capitalizing on a missed field goal. Though he “played the game perfectly,” Pflueger lost, though he avoided getting “dubbed,” an automatic loss when getting beaten by three touchdowns.

“They’re definitely intense because it’s a pride thing when it comes to our locker room,” Pflueger said. “Anything on our team it’s super competitive. When it comes to an actual physical representation of a game, especially one we all think we’re better than each other at, we go in every single time we play.”

There’s a variety of opinions on who the best Madden player on the team is. First-year video coordinator Eric Atkins, a 24-year-old former player under head coach Mike Brey, received several compliments, though Beachem questioned Atkins’ eligibility.

Atkins, who also proclaimed himself the best, agreed that it might not be fair to hold the title.

“They have homework to get to when they leave here, I go home, make dinner and play Madden some more,” Atkins said.

Some like to talk a big game. Pflueger said he has “dubbed” junior forward Bonzie Colson several times in a row, though Colson still likes to brag.

Junior point guard Matt Farrell, who doesn’t play but likes to observe, said a lot of the participants don’t understand football but think they do.

“I don’t think Bonzie’s that good, and you can quote me on that,” Farrell said. “I’m sure he’ll come at me.”

What the team does agree on is the significance of the downtime spent together.

Senior guard Steve Vasturia, one of the team leaders for the Irish, said time away from the court has gone a long way toward Notre Dame’s success the past several years.

“As I’ve been here, every year we’ve kind of grown in that and it’s correlated with the success,” Vasturia said. “Just doing stuff together off the court, hanging out together, we hang out a lot on the weekends and it’s fun. You’re with your teammates pretty much 24/7 during the season, so if you didn’t get along you’d struggle on the court. It’s showing that we’ve got pretty good chemistry both on and off.”

Farrell said he has a new appreciation for the off-the-court aspects of college basketball since the Irish have made back-to-back Elite 8 appearances.

“After the past two years, now we’ve realized how important that stuff is,” Farrell said. “It really does matter. It helps you mentally when you’re on the floor with these guys, you’re going through the same thing. Being together strengthens the bond, the guys want to play for each other. When it gets to that point, you can do something really special when you want to play for other guys.

“The guys we recruit shows a lot about the culture here, the coaching staff and how we do things. If things are going well off the court, that’s going to translate to things going well on the court. That’s big. It speaks volumes.”

The way the Irish bicker playing Madden translates to the basketball floor, Pflueger said. Getting under a teammate’s skin in a playful manner, then siding with that same person against a common enemy, brings the Irish together.

With the Joyce Center floor only 40 feet outside the door, a lot of trust is built sitting on a couch with a controller in their hands.

“Especially on the basketball court and with our passing we have on our team, our culture that we talk about, we can trust each other in certain situations,” Pflueger said. “If someone messes up we know we’re not going to get mad at them and we’re just going brush it off and move on to the next play.”