After losing to Kentucky, I was filled with two feelings: sadness and pride. This was the biggest Notre Dame basketball game of my entire life. After the biggest Notre Dame football game since January 2, 1989, all I felt was sadness. You probably know that I dress by mood. Yesterday I wore a black shirt (sadness), but I also wore a Notre Dame tie (pride). We didn't lose because we weren't good enough. We lost because a college basketball game is 40 minutes and Kentucky happened to have two more points than us after 40 minutes. We were every bit as good as they were and if the game was 38 minutes, we would have won. If the game was 42 minutes, maybe we come back and win. Before selection show, my dad asked me which 1 seed I wanted to be with. My answer was Kentucky. Because Notre Dame has a history of winning games that nobody expects us to win. We ended UCLA's winning streak at 88 in 1974 (we were also the last team to beat them before the streak started). We ended Oklahoma's winning streak in football at 47 in 1957. I really believed we could beat Kentucky. We came really close.
We should finish the season ranked in the top 5. I don't know if that will happen, but we should. Kentucky and Wisconsin belong ahead of us. Duke is debatable, but they will be ahead of us. Michigan State doesn't belong ahead of us unless they win the championship game or lose in overtime against Kentucky, but there's a good chance they will be too. Villanova doesn't belong ahead of us. I can live with Arizona ahead of us, but that's debatable too. Gonzaga, Kansas, and Virginia don't belong ahead of us. We'll at least be in the top ten, but really we should be in the top five. We were a legitimate contender for the national championship, but we came up a little short. I didn't know if I'd ever see a Notre Dame men's basketball team that was this good. We won the ACC (our first conference championship), 32 games (second most in Notre Dame history behind only the 1908-1909 team, made the Elite 8 (first time since 1979), and we competed with everybody we played. The only team we didn't compete with was Duke one time and we beat them the other two times we played them. There was all this talk before the tournament about how we didn't play a good non-conference schedule (and we didn't), but we went 8-2 against teams that made the Sweet 16, 4-2 against teams that made the Elite 8, and 3-2 against teams that made the Final Four. I am very proud of what this team accomplished this year and the way they competed against Kentucky.
I'm proud of everything Notre Dame stands for. We have a 100% graduation rate in men's and women's basketball. Our best player missed all of conference play last year because he was suspended for academic reasons. It definitely cost us some games, but I'm proud that we do things the way we do. Kentucky is the exact opposite. They have a team of hired mercenaries, not real students. If somebody offered me a chance for Notre Dame and Kentucky to switch places in men's basketball (we get all their success and lack of standards that go along with it), I would laugh in their face. I'd much rather do things the way we do them regardless of how much we win than do things the way Kentucky does them and win all the time. This year we proved that we can do things the right way and be a legitimate national championship contender.
I also felt great sadness, but it was different from what I felt after the National Championship Game two years ago. After that game, I was sad mainly because we played so terribly and we never had a chance. This time I was sad because we lost and missed out on a Final Four and a legitimate chance at a national championship. We were 3-1 against Michigan State and Duke. There's no guarantee that we would have won it all, but we could have beaten Wisconsin too and then we would have played a team that we've already proven we could beat.
There was another reason for the sadness, though. I was sad that I'll never get to see this team play again. They played beautiful basketball and it was so much fun to watch. Jerian Grant was probably the best Notre Dame basketball player of my lifetime. Pat Connaughton was my favorite Notre Dame basketball player ever (read this story and be ready for it to get suddenly dusty). And I'll never get to see them play for Notre Dame again. I'll be rooting for both of them in their professional careers. For Grant, he'll be in the NBA next year. I hope the Celtics draft him. I don't know what's going to happen with Connaughton. I don't know what he wants to do. If he wants to play baseball, I hope he has a great career and somehow ends up with the Dodgers. If he wants to play basketball, he might not make the NBA (but I don't rule it out), but I have to think he could play professionally overseas somewhere. He can shoot, he plays much bigger than his size, and he's not afraid of anybody. It was a pleasure to watch him go against much bigger players this year and do a great job of rebounding. His block against Butler will not be forgotten anytime soon. His leadership will be missed next year. Grant and Connaughton did a great job leading late in the game against Butler when Butler had a chance to beat us. By the way, beating Kentucky would have instantly been my favorite college basketball game of all time, replacing the five overtime win over Louisville two years ago. Go back and read that post. It's not surprising that Grant and Connaughton both played huge roles in that win. Thank you for this year and thank you for everything over the last four years.
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| This was was on the board in my classroom to greet my students on Monday. |
I was not a Mike Brey fan when I was a student. I was only at Notre Dame for two years and he didn't make the tournament. Since then, I think he's done a fantastic job. He took some heat for our lack of success in March, but I always thought it was unfair. It's a single elimination tournament. One bad game and your season is done. If Brey ever left, we could easily be much much worse than we are now. Before Brey got to the tournament in 2001, we hadn't been there since 1990. Since Brey took over in 2000-2001, we've only missed the tournament in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, and 2014. We are lucky to have Mike Brey. What he did with this team this year was masterful. By the way, I've written about our rivalry with Louisville, but do we now have a rivalry with Duke? Brey used to be one of Coach K's assistants. He's the only former Coach K assistant to beat him. And since we joined the ACC last year, we're 3-1 against Duke. And speaking of Duke, according to my tournament rankings, I should be rooting for them in the Final Four. But I find myself rooting for Michigan State. Let's adjust those and put Duke and North Carolina behind the Big Ten teams. I do really hate the Big Ten, but I have some respect for Michigan State for being willing to play us in football when the rest of the conference wouldn't.
Notre Dame proved me right about something this year. People talk about us being at a disadvantage in football because of our academic standards. I think it's overstated. Yeah, it's harder for us and we can't get just anybody, be we can get Michael Floyd, Manti Te'o, Jaylon Smith, etc. But basketball is different. We cannot get Anthony Davis or Andrew Wiggins or Jahlil Okafor. We're not going to take players that are going to pretend to be students for a semester when all they really care about is playing in the NBA the next year. So it's a disadvantage when you can't get the most talented players. On the other hand, that's a pretty small number of players. We can get better players than probably at least 90% of teams in Division I. We can get players that are a notch below the most talented guys, like Demetrius Jackson. And when you get really talented players that are going to stay for four years, that can be used as an advantage. We didn't have the talent that Kentucky had, but we built a team that was led by two seniors. The continuity that you get from players playing together for several years is an advantage. We could compete with Kentucky or anybody else because of the way the team played together and the leadership of Grant and Connaughton.
I'm excited about the future. We shouldn't be as good next year without Grant and Connaughton, but I think we'll be a tournament team again. Maybe we end up in a more favorable bracket (like Michigan State this year) and make another run to the Elite 8 or even further in the tournament next year (not likely, but not impossible). Going back to Brey, I loved the improvement I saw in some players this year. Demetrius Jackson showed great improvement from freshman to sophomore year and he'll be our best player next year. Steve Vasturia got better and better as the year went on. Bonzie Colson and Zack Auguste improved throughout the year. Those are going to be four good players for us next year. I expect Brey will be able to find a way to get a few more guys to make contributions. We won't be able to replace Grant's talent, but Jackson is going to be really really good. Pat Connaughton is going to be especially difficult to replace. We were undersized this year, but we were able to do it because Connaughton could match up with bigger guys. They couldn't guard him on the perimeter, but he could rebound with them. So do we play small again next year and sacrifice a rebounder or do we play bigger and sacrifice a shooter? I have confidence that Brey will figure it out.
This was the best Notre Dame basketball team of my lifetime. I hope I'll get to see another championship caliber team soon. I loved this team and I'm sad I don't get to see them again. Playing like a champion doesn't always result in a national championship, but they did play like a champion. Thank you Mike Brey, Jerian Grant, Pat Connaughton, and everybody else.
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