SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Micah Shrewsberry got a chance on Thursday to get an up-close look at some players he hopes will someday be part of the Notre Dame men’s basketball team’s present.
With a blueprint in his head for the future that’s largely the same following a 13-20 bottom line in his first season as the Irish head coach.
“You figure out the ins and outs,” Shrewsberry said Thursday of what he had learned about recruiting at Notre Dame after coming from Penn State. “College basketball is constantly evolving, but you’ve got to develop your plan and stick with your plan. I think I’ve tried to have a plan since I’ve gotten here.
“And no matter how things shake, you’ve got to stay with it. I don’t think you can reinvent things totally. There are small tweaks that you can make, but I don’t think you reinvent things until you have a chance to see: is it working or is it not working? We’re still in that kind of phase – hey we’re sticking to your plan — this is how we’re doing it. I kind of like where we’re at at this point.”
One of the tweaks Shrewsberry has made was adding a team basketball camp in offseason No. 2 that Notre Dame hosted on Thursday, comprising 12 high school programs from the Midwest in a 17-game slate of matchups.
That, in turn, brought 2025 Irish hoops targets Trent Sisley of Santa Claus (Ind.) Heritage Hills High, Braylon Mullins of Greenfield (Ind.) Central, Azavier Robinson of Indianapolis Lawrence North and 2026 target Steven Reynolds III from South Bend (Ind.) Washington.
Shrewsberry said his plan is to make it an annual affair and, hopefully, expand the number of teams over time in subsequent summers. The other eight teams participating Thursday were Indianapolis Crispus Attucks, Fishers (Ind.), South Bend Saint Joseph, Plainfield (Ind.), Lisle (Ill.) Benet Academy, Wilmette (Ill.) Loyola Academy, Louisville (Ky.) St. Xavier and Winton Woods (Ohio).
“I don’t know when Notre Dame has done it or [if they’ve ever done it],” Shrewsberry said. “But there were a lot of people [that were interested]. Because of space and timing and everything else, you’ve got to keep it to a smaller number.
“But there are so many people who still wanted to come. I spoke at the Indiana Coaches Convention at some point in time this spring, and there were so many coaches going, ‘Are you guys having a shootout, because we want to come? We went to bring our team.’
“It’s something that’s great. Indiana does it. Purdue does it. Butler does it. A lot of the teams do it, and we wanted to add ourselves to the mix, because it’s such a great chance to interact with high school coaches.”
Notre Dame used the men’s and women’s practice courts at Rolfs Athletics Hall and The Pit old practice court in Purcell Pavilion to stage the games that ran over a seven-hour time frame.
“The more people you can bring to our campus is great,” Shrewsberry said. “There might be guys here that have no interest in playing basketball or doing athletics. Maybe they want to be students at Notre Dame. And they get a chance to walk around campus.
“We have limited times when we can go out and do stuff and recruit. But anytime you get somebody on your campus is big. And they’re willingly coming.”
Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman even had a recruit participating in the camp — uncommitted wide receiver prospect JonAnthony Hall, a starting guard on Fishers’ Indiana Class 4A championship team.
Hall had just finished his three-day official recruiting visit for football Thursday morning when his Fishers teammates joined him at the hoops camp.
Golden aftermath
Notre Dame’s three transfers and three freshmen on the basketball roster reported for summer school and summer workouts Sunday, two days before Shrewsberry was able to join them.
He was busy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, serving as an assistant coach on Team USA’s U18 squad on its way to winning a gold medal in the AmeriCup tournament. The Americans crushed the host Argentinans, 110-70, in the gold-medal game.
University of Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd served as head coach for the team.
“It was really fun,” Shrewsberry said. “Being at the trials, having the chance to pick the team, go to Argentina together, spend the time there. Just like those players are 12 of the best players in the country, they can’t play 12 people, so they’re in different roles.
“Even for myself. Tommy Lloyd was the head coach. So learning his system, learning how he wanted to do things, it opened things up for me to learn a different way and different style. Grant McCasland, the head coach at Texas Tech, and I are both doing scouts and scouting teams. It was a neat experience. It’s been a non-stop kind of spring and summer for me, but it was kind of refreshing, because I was just coaching basketball.”
Assessing the transfer class
Notre Dame’s three members of the transfer class are Matt Allocco, a 6-4 guard from Princeton; Burke Chebuhar, a 6-8 forward from Lehigh; and Nikita Konstantynovskyi, a 6-10 forward from Monmouth and a nightmare for headline writers with limited characters.
All three are grad transfers and join freshmen Garrett Sundra (6-11 F), Cole Certa (6-5 G) and Sir Mohammad (6-6 G) as the roster additions for a 2024-25 team that feature seven scholarship returnees and three returning walk-ons.
“I didn’t get back until Tuesday, so I haven’t been on the court with those guys yet,’ Shrewsberry said of the transfers, “but who they are as people right now really stands out.
“I think the voices that Matt Allocco and Nikita bring, how they talk immediately is totally different than who we’ve been and who we were last year. And we just got older, more-experienced guys. And those two and Burke, that’s what they really add is that experience.
“It’s been a good group. And they’ve already started doing stuff together, without any prodding from the coaches. Immediately when they were here, everybody arrived on Sunday. And Sunday night they were at Julian Roper’s house watching the [NBA] Finals together. I didn’t tell them to do that.
“That’s Matt Allocco and Julian Roper, who have never met [and] who are already getting everybody together. I think that you’ll see a group that, because we have this experience together, you’ll see a group that’s closer, not to say that we weren’t close. But this group intentionally is going to be closer through their own doings. And I’m excited about that.”
Burton’s return
After dipping his toe in the NBA Draft waters, ACC Rookie of the Year Markus Burton is back for his sophomore season and so is his 17.5 ppg scoring average — three-best nationally among freshmen in 2023-24.
From the start 5-11 point guard framed his declaration for the draft, and subsequent withdrawal, as a feedback-finding mission, and something Shrewsberry wholeheartedly endorsed.
“You can take your name out twice without losing your eligibility, so it makes sense to do it,” Shrewsberry said. “You have a great year like that, it makes sense to now get the feedback that he needs to get and then kind of put it into action.
“I told him, ‘I’m always here. My door is always open.’ I’m here for him. I just want to see him have success and our team and what he’s able to do. And so, we’re fired up to have him. He’s fired up to be here. I’m looking forward to having all these guys together and just having fun.”
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