Notre Dame officially named its former forward Ryan Humphrey an assistant coach Wednesday.
The former 2000-02 Irish All-American most recently served as the director of player development at Northwestern.
“I’ve had my eye on him the last couple years as he was paying his dues to get into coaching and I am so excited to get him working with our front-line guys,” head coach Mike Brey said in a statement. “Our big guys don’t know how lucky they are to have a guy like Ryan Humphrey, someone who developed into a first-round pick out of our system, working with them on a daily basis.”
“He is a class act, a winner and he adds great energy to the program.”
Humphrey averaged 14.1 points and 9.0 rebounds per game on Brey’s first team while becoming a third-team all-Big East talent with the Irish as a West Division champ.
“Coach Brey and his staff have done an exceptional job of mapping Notre Dame as a national basketball powerhouse. Reuniting with the Notre Dame basketball family is definitely a privilege and an honor,” Humphrey said in a statement.
Humphrey earned Monogram Club team MVP honors after his 2001-02 captain season that included an 18.9 point, 10.9 rebound campaign. His 166 career blocks — in two seasons — are just 35 shy of Jordan Cornette’s school record.
While Humphrey transferred to Notre Dame while Matt Doherty was the head coach, it was under Brey that he made his name and helped jumpstart a program starved for NCAA tournament success.
“He was instrumental to me getting our program started here,” Brey said. “The first two years he was eligible, we went to the NCAA tournament which was so important because we had a 10-year drought before that. He was a great captain his senior year.”
The Utah Jazz selected him 19th overall in the 2002 NBA Draft but was traded to the Orlando Magic that evening. His final NBA season was in 2004-05. He played internationally before joining Northwestern.
“Ryan Humphrey is a rising star in the coaching profession,” Northwestern head coach Chris Collins said in a statement. “Our Northwestern program was able to reach new heights this past season and a large part of that is directly correlated to Ryan’s work ethic and all that he did to help move our program forward. We will miss him in Evanston, but we couldn’t be happier for him to earn this opportunity to return to his alma mater and wish nothing but the best for him, RaSheda and their boys.”
Notre Dame will likely introduce Humphrey at a press conference next week. The program faced two coaching departures this offseason in Martin Ingelsby, who is now the head coach at Delaware, and Anthony Solomon, who is now an assistant at Georgetown.
