After a combined 51 years as basketball head coaches at Notre Dame, Mike Brey (19 seasons) and Muffet McGraw (32) understand where their programs rank in the Fighting Irish athletic hierarchy.
Football will always remain king, even after a 4-8 record in 2016 while men’s basketball was coming off back-to-back Elite Eight appearances to go with an ACC championship, and the women were building toward the 2018 national title and a seventh Final Four appearance in nine years.
However, this month’s official dedication of the long-awaited, state-of-the-art 77,000-square-foot Rolfs Athletics Hall for both teams has served as the ultimate reward and validation of jobs well done and commitment to future excellence.
“It’s almost like taking a new coaching job being in here now,” said Brey while meeting with local media during the first tour of the facility.
“We started talking about it in 2000 — and 18 years (or 19) later here we are,” said a beaming McGraw, whose national runner-up team barely practiced there this past season. McGraw is still not fully settled into her office yet.
“I think they were kind of overwhelmed initially,” said McGraw of her team’s initial trip through Rolfs.
It was in 2000 that former director of athletics Kevin White (2000-08) made an immense commitment toward upgrading athletic facilities everywhere on campus. It was the same year Brey took over as head coach and McGraw was on the cusp of her first national title in 2001.
But when 9-11 occurred in 2001, some tightening of purse strings resulted. The Guglielmino Athletics Complex for football, which opened in 2005, was the foremost priority on the athletic side, and numerous other facilities, including the Compton Family Ice Arena for hockey, were underwritten by donors. The compromise with basketball was to upgrade the locker rooms and the seating while adding amenities such as a video board to Purcell Pavilion in the Joyce Center.
“They went ‘slow burn’ on me with the arena,” chuckled Brey.
Shortly after current director of athletics Jack Swarbrick took the helm in the summer of 2008, he took a tour with Brey, McGraw and deputy athletics director Missy Conboy to new practice facilities at Kentucky, Georgia and South Florida to at least formulate blue prints for the future — but first the $400-plus-million Campus Crossroad for Notre Dame Stadium had to be completed.
“I certainly understand where I coach because that monstrosity over there (pointing to the football stadium) had to be finished first — and I get that,” Brey said. “But we’re where we need to be now, especially in the league we’re in.”
During Notre Dame’s time in the Big East that lasted until the 2012-13 season, Brey said top-of-the-line facilities were not really much of an issue because other schools such as Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Rutgers, DePaul et al weren’t much better, or even worse.
He even chuckled recalling how Mississippi State transfer Ben Hansbrough, who would be the 2011 Big East Player of the Year, was awed during his recruiting trip to Notre Dame with “The Pit” in the Joyce Center as a practice facility where he could shoot around any time.
In the ACC, though, it’s a different world.
“The league we signed up for six years ago has got all the ammunition — we’re there with them now, there’s no question,” Brey said.
One-Stop Shopping
The perfectly bisected facility with the men’s side on the left of the main entrance and the women’s on the right is now “one-stop shopping” exclusively for basketball. No more scheduling around summer camps or American Youth On Parade baton twirling competitions for sharing court time.
Rolfs now does not require players to do weight training in one area, getting food elsewhere, receiving health treatment in a third …
The 4,100 square feet in the weight room more than doubles the 1,900 at the Joyce Center. The workouts used to held at Compton with its more updated weight-training equipment.
This is especially significant to Brey now because of a premium on his young team last year needing to get much stronger physically to play against "the men in the ACC." He noted that big men Juwan Durham is up to 230 pounds (223 last season) and Nate Laszewski to 222 after playing at 200 last season.
There is even a scale players step on before and after practice that measures how much hydration is needed. McGraw particularly is fond of the massage chairs, and the nutrition area is loaded with protein shakes and other quality nutrients, while the film and dressing rooms are first class. The men’s side even has a barber’s chair.
“I think we’ve done a lot with what we’ve had, but to have a facility like this – it’s really what the kids want, it’s what they’re looking for,” McGraw said. “They’re wowed by all the glitz and glamour, all the bell and whistles, and now we have that.”
Especially vital to the coaches is the court space with a regulation-sized arena and three other baskets off to the side where individual and group work can be achieved without any waste of time.
“We can practice completely differently now,” McGraw said. “We were so hampered by just the two rims.”
As for recruiting, neither coach would say they’ve had a prospect tell them that he or she was going elsewhere because of better facilities, but both know that could never be used as an excuse now.
“Kids want to know one thing: how are you going to develop them as a player, how do they reach the next level, and how are you going to help me get there?” McGraw said. “ This is going to help them get there … everything is right here.
“[Other programs] have had more impressive facilities, and they’d come here and say, ‘Where’s the practice gym?’ and we’d take them to The Pit — and it’s not only even only ours. We had to share that. I don’t know that we lost a kid just for that reason, but certainly when they looked at the big picture that was something that was important to them.”
Brey warned his current team that upgraded facilities alone aren’t or won’t be the “magic bullet” that turns around last year’s team, but if definitely offers a better outlook and chance in the future.
“When [recruits] have walked through practice facilities at other places, I do think we maybe have lost some momentum in some areas,” Brey said. “Yes, it is a real positive thing in recruiting, but I think where it’s really important is the guys we get — the [John] Mooneys, the [Bonzie] Colsons, the Chris Quinns, the Jack Cooleys — it’s an even more efficient laboratory for them to get better.
“We need a couple of guys to make a Johnny Mooney jump like Johnny made this past year. That’s not out of the question because we’ve had a track record of guys doing that … It’s even more efficient because it’s a better weight room. It’s easier access. Certainly we can do more with them in the off season now and coach them.”
Alumni Locker Room
Brey is especially pleased with his request of adding an alumni locker room for former players. He joked that former 2013-16 guard Demetrius Jackson has “lived here the past six weeks,” and even Elijah Burns, who graduated last December and transferred to Siena, have returned to take advantage of its availability.
Current Milwaukee Bucks guard Pat Connaughton, who helped spearhead the run to the Elite Eight in 2015, already is organizing a minicamp and reunion of current Notre Dame pros in the NBA and Europe to scrimmage against the current Fighting Irish team this summer.
“There will be some good pickup games with our current guys,” Brey said.
Regardless, on the day before home games, the Irish men and women will practice inside their normal home-court arena because it’s still vital to have a feel and rhythm on the home floor.
“The day before the game is a given,” Brey said. "I even think two three times a week — we can’t lose that and hide over here. It has been an advantage to practice on our game court.
“I like going there more often than not even though you don’t have extra baskets. ...We have to do that and we have to probably do that even more because we weren’t very good at home [this past season]’. ‘[Purcell Pavilion] has been good to us and it has to be good to us again.
“Maybe if we need to get poor again I lock this building up and we go back to The Pit. You never know.”
McGraw is so awed by the new digs that now she might even request upgrading the locker rooms back at the Joyce Center.
“Right after football gets their third new building,” she joked.
Both still recognize football will always be the king, but at least now they have their own regal palace.
----
• Talk about it inside Rockne’s Roundtable
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, Blue & Gold Illustrated.
• Follow us on Twitter: @BGINews, @BGI_LouSomogyi, @BGI_CoachD, @Rivals_Singer, @EJHollandBGI and @BGI_DMcKinney
• Like us on Facebook.
