Notre Dame's recruiting spree shows faith in what Shrewsberry's building
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Kebba Njie understands wanting to play college basketball for Micah Shrewsberry.
Njie, now a 6-foot-10, 254-pound forward, committed to Shrewsberry was he was the head coach at Penn State. Then Njie followed Shrewsberry as a transfer from Penn State to Notre Dame when Shrewsberry changed jobs early last year.
So it wasn’t surprising to Njie that Shrewsberry and the rest of the Irish coaching staff could land four coveted recruits in the 2025 class in an eight-day span in late September.
“That speaks to what the coaching staff is doing, what kind of people they are,” Njie said Tuesday. “I’ve been preaching about it for as long as I’ve been here. Coach Shrews and them are the best in the country. That speaks to them. That’s all a credit to them. It’s an exciting thing for them to be able to continue to recruit at such a high level whether we had a bad year or not.”
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The Irish finished 13-20 and 13th in the ACC regular season standings last season in Shrewsberry’s first year leading the program. Yet they’re currently sitting No. 1 in the Rivals team recruiting rankings for the 2025 class with three four-star commitments from small forwards Jalen Haralson (No. 17 overall) and Ryder Frost (No. 96) and power forward Brady Koehler (No. 111) and one three-star commitment from center Tommy Ahneman. Those four can sign with the Irish when the early signing period opens Nov. 13-20.
The growth within last season from the low moments that culminated in a 20-point home loss to The Citadel in December to the highs of winning five out of six ACC games in February-March has been part of the recruiting pitch for Shrewsberry. The Irish are selling what this program can become.
“That growth is what we’re pointing towards,” Shrewsberry said. “I don’t know if they could always see it. But you can in stretches. Now you can see it more consistently.
“But we continue to keep building. What we want to do is stack good classes on top of good classes and keep adding good players. I love the foundation that we have. We’re getting back to a little bit old school, where you feel good about your seniors next year. You feel good about the junior class that will be there. You feel good about the freshman now that will be sophomores. Now the group that’s coming in, keep stacking classes together of guys that fit.
“Now your vision can start to come out for everybody to see it. Instead of just being my vision and showing a couple people, now more and more people start to see it, start to buy into it and start to believe in it.”
Freshman guard Cole Certa bought into Shrewsberry’s vision well before last season even started. He became the first commitment in Notre Dame’s 2024 class in May 2023. He enjoyed watching the four 2025 recruits commit to the program last month.
“It’s really awesome,” Certa said. “It’s just a sign of the culture that we have here. It’s really exciting to see what the future holds. It’s really cool to see all those guys jump.”
Shrewsberry said he’s starting to be able to show more Notre Dame film when showing recruits examples of players and playing styles that could mirror them. Eventually, Shrewsberry won’t have to use any Penn State film if all goes well.
The Penn State ties are still obvious on Shrewsberry’s staff. Assistant coach Mike Farrelly, director of recruiting Brian Snow, development and recruiting coordinator Grady Eifert and assistant to the head coach Tre Whitted all followed Shrewsberry to Notre Dame from Penn State. The staff continuity with associate head coach Kyle Getter and assistant coach Ryan Owens also on Shrewsberry’s Notre Dame staff for a second season allowed the recruiting relationships to have consistency and depth.
Shrewsberry credited the hard work from Notre Dame’s staff for putting together such an impressive 2025 class.
“It hasn’t been easy. It’s a lot of hours, a lot of manpower, a lot of time,” Shrewsberry said. “We talk about family, but it truly is family. It’s my wife hosting families on the weekends during football weekends. It’s some of our assistant coaches’ wives not seeing their husbands for a while. There’s a lot of sacrifice that goes into this.
“But to feel the buzz, it’s a great credit, especially for our staff, for our staff’s families. But then it’s also a testament to the guys on our team. They’ve been some of the biggest recruiters that we’ve had. Everybody has loved spending time with our freshmen. Not just them, but everybody on our team. We have a great group of guys that people want to be around. We have a great system that we’re going to play. We have an unbelievable university and alumni base and everything else that we can sell. It makes it easy for us when you’re recruiting the right kids.”
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The three scholarship freshmen — four-star guards Sir Mohammed and Certa and three-star forward Garrett Sundra — on Notre Dame’s roster this season were all committed to Notre Dame before the end of August last year. Notre Dame had zero 2025 commitments at the start of September this year.
“The most rewarding is just seeing the hard work pay off,” Shrewsberry said. “Sometimes you have no clue. Somebody I was talking to said, ‘It’s like turning on a faucet.’ Once you turn it on, it can get rolling. But if it never gets turned on, that’s a struggle too.
“We were at a struggle for a while. 2025 has been a slower cycle for recruiting across the country. You never know what’s going to happen. It just so happened for us at one time. The payoff, the hours that you put in, the time, but also the plan. This has been, since I got the job last year, what we’ve pointed towards and what we’ve tried to do. Now you’re kind of seeing that coming to fruition a little bit.”
Even though men’s basketball scholarship limits may be increased to 15 next year due to a pending NCAA settlement, Shrewsberry wants to be careful in pushing to that number. The Irish have four 2025 commits and four players on the 2024-25 roster entering their final season of eligibility. That puts the Irish currently on pace for 13 scholarship players next season without any additional commitments or transfer portal departures.
Notre Dame's still weighing whether it will add another commitment to the 2025 class.
“You have to sell an opportunity,” Shrewsberry said. “If you get to 15 scholarships, it’s hard to sell opportunity. You’re just asking for people to transfer is what you’re asking for. If I tell you, you have an opportunity, and there’s 14 people on the roster next to you, you’re like, ‘How? When? Where?’ But we can point to it.
“It’s a constant math problem, I guess, to figure out what’s best. We always want to do best for our university. We always want to do what’s best for our program. Sometimes that’s not going to that number, because we want to retain our guys. How do we retain them? We show them that they have an opportunity to play here. We show them that they have an opportunity to have a role here. You can do that when it’s not a full boat.”
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