SOUTH BEND, Ind. — On a February night in Philadelphia back in 1997, a little after midnight ahead of a game that next afternoon against Villanova, Notre Dame men’s basketball player Pat Garrity was spotted in the hotel bar where the Irish were staying …
Doing his homework at one of the more well-lit tables, so that the junior wouldn’t keep his roommate awake back in their hotel room.
A pre-med major then on his way to becoming Notre Dame’s first-ever Big East Player of the Year at the end of that NIT-qualifying season, Garrity understood the value of culture and player development, even on a team that had no chance at being in the One Shining Moment video later that spring.
Preserving that, fighting for that, fostering that piece of the past in his newly created role as Notre Dame men’s and women’s basketball general manager is how three decades later the 48-year-old version of Pat Garrity can make the biggest impact on his alma mater’s basketball programs.
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Even though very little, beyond the back door into Purcell Pavilion, around the programs looks like it did even five years ago.
Garrity’s experience as an NBA executive after his decade as a player in the NBA ended will come into play too — in scouting and evaluating, in figuring out how the revenue-sharing numbers need to be spent, in applying analytics, in just being a great sounding board for third-year men’s head coach Micah Shrewsberry and sixth-year women’s head coach Niele Ivey.
But both his calling card and his trump card is marrying the best of college sports’ past with the new semi-pro reality it’s immersed in.
“I think the larger perspective that I have on it is that there are a lot of student-athletes that are making good decisions for them that they’re rewarded financially,” Garrity said Thursday during his introductory press conference at Notre Dame Stadium, “but they’re also going to get through college connected to a place and being remembered at a place.
“And I think there are a lot of people making short-term decisions that maybe financially look good now, but maybe looking back in 10 years, they’re asking, ‘What am I left with? Where was my real home and what am I remembered for?’
“I think that’s one of the big things that we have to focus on here just in terms of retention is just selling the point of there’s the money aspect of this thing. It’s just a reality in college sports, but there’s more to that. Like. being remembered as an all-time great at a college means something when you hang it up eventually.
“And so, I think we have to be able to demonstrate to our student-athletes that we can get you there and that’s ultimately the important thing. That includes bringing the past all-time greats around to get that message across.”
It’s a model that’s worked well essentially for football coach Marcus Freeman at this point, with the Irish football team reaching the title game this past January with a roster primarily built with high school recruits.
A model where development and retention is valued, where life after football is a big part of the recruiting pitch and where the transfer portal is necessary, but to fill holes — not to be a cornerstone.
Which is what Pat Garrity, whose son Henry plays for Freeman as a walk-on tight end, will work toward with the basketball programs.
“When you’re a team and a program like we have here, the word is development,” Pat Garrity said. “Like, we’re bringing in freshmen. We’re developing them physically on the floor into roles where they know that they can grow and excel.
“That doesn’t mean the portal isn’t going to be a part of it, but I think as we’ve seen, it’s going to be more limited [by admissions] than a lot of other places. I actually look at it as an advantage. Because when you’re having a conversation with a young player and their family about your plan to develop them as a player and where you think you can get, they can pretty much take that to the bank if they come and put the work in.”
It was athletic director Pete Bevacqua who put the work in to come up with a basketball GM concept that’s still not yet common in college basketball and almost unique when it comes to Garrity overseeing both hoops programs.
And it was part of Bevacqua’s brainstorm to think of Garrity to fill that role.
“These two [basketball] programs are absolute priorities for the athletic department and the university,” Bevacqua said. “So, once we got through the rationale and the ‘why,’ then it became, OK, the ‘who.’ And I think people in this room will agree with me that if you kind of went into a laboratory and created the perfect person for this, it would be Pat.”
Bevacqua then went on to detail Garrity’s elongated résumé, basketball- and academic-related. That included being a first-round NBA Draft pick, picking up an MBA at Duke, extensive NBA front-office experience, and being an elite student — in the classroom, of the game and at least for one night, in a hotel bar.
“We just knew that he’s somebody who can come in here and make an immediate impact and help Micah and help Niele and help me and the rest of the [athletic department] staff,” Bevacqua said.
Shrewsberry and Ivey didn’t ask for a GM, but Shrewsberry called them both “giddy” when they found out they were getting one and that it was going to be Garrity. Shrewsberry even joked that he was talking ball with Garrity minutes into his arrival on campus, even before he could take his coat off.
Meanwhile, Ivey’s own playing career at Notre Dame overlapped Garrity’s, with the Irish women’s program making its first-ever Final Four in 1997, when Ivey was a freshman, and winning it all in 2001, when Ivey was a redshirt senior
And even though the Irish women’s hoops roster will be portal-heavy in the upcoming season — four transfers and counting — Ivey is embracing Garrity’s old school philosophy in college basketball’s new world.
Build, develop, lean into the past to perpetuate the culture.
“He is a representative for us, somebody that’s had success here,” Ivey said. “He’s a two-time Academic All-American. He’s utilized his time here at Notre Dame. He’s a prime example for our current student-athletes and then for recruiting.
“Culture is huge. We’re both [Ivey and Shrewsberry] always trying to bring back our all-time greats, and he is an all-time great that’s [now] working here. So, that’s a prime example of when you stay here, when you’re developed with the vision that we have for these student-athletes, you could be successful. And the development piece is going to be part of what we’re both preaching for our student-athletes.”
Before Garrity committed to get in on that preaching, he was technically in a retirement phase when Notre Dame called. But he is happy to be out of it, and he’s not the only one in the Garrity household who is elated about it, the new GM shared with a laugh.
“For the first few years, I played the media game for a while, did a weekly show, which was fun,” he said. “But it was really over the last couple of years when Henry left [for Notre Dame], it was like, ‘OK, it’s time to get back to work.’
“There were a couple of opportunities in the NBA. some that weren’t the right fit at the time, some that could have materialized. But it was pretty much in the last couple of years, it’s time to get back to work — or else my wife [Paula] is going to kill me.”
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