Notre Dame coach Mike Brey will step down at the end of this basketball season.
The popular 63-year-old Brey is the winningest coach in school history with a 481-269 career record. He led Notre Dame to 16 20 win seasons and 13 NCAA tournaments in 23 years.
His best season came in 2015, when the Irish won the ACC tournament, reached the Elite Eight and pushed unbeaten Kentucky to the edge before losing to unbeaten Cats in Cleveland. The Irish returned to another Final Eight the following year.
But Notre Dame lost its way. The program went four straight years without a tournament appearance before last season when they finished 24-11 and season, 15-5 in the ACC– one game back of Duke for the conference regular season title– and defeated Rutgers in the First Four and Alabama in the first round before falling to Texas Tech.
Now, based on this season, that might have been an outlier.
This season has been a nightmare. The Irish had high expectations with four senior starters, but are 9-10 following a home loss to Florida State and are just 1-7 in the ACC.
He could take a job with the administration, speculation that we heard last season, if he doesn’t retire to his beach house in Bethany, DE..
“Mike and I have talked often in recent years about a future transition in the program’s leadership and during our most recent conversation we reached a mutual conclusion that the end of the season represented the right time,” AD Jack Swarbrick said. “That Mike is the winningest coach in the 119- year history of Notre Dame men’s basketball speaks to his skill as a teach of the game. His even greater legacy, however, lies in his achievements as an educator and mentor of the young men who played for him In that sense, he represents this University as well as any coach I have worked with during my time at Notre Dame. I look forward to working with Mike to define his future role within the Notre Dame athletics.”
The loss to Florida State was likely the beginning of the end. Florida State scored the first 10 points. Nine minutes in, Notre Dame trailed 32-8 and later the deficit grew to 24 points in the second half. Afterwards when fingers were pointing, Brey pointed one at himself in an ugly press conference that may have hastened the announcement. We can assume Brey expected to see a team that would dig in and defend after having lost three nights earlier to Syracuse. He got none of that. “I’m probably too nice.,” he said. “Probably too, ‘How’s your psyche? ” And how’s your head.” Be positive. You know Coach Mike does it– ‘Hey, rah, rah. Everybody gets confident. Any way. . . God I spoiled everybody. Everybody. People who work with me. Everybody’s spoiled. Everybody’s spoiled.”
No one knows when this went sideways. But it is one of the repercussions of moving to the wrong league. Brey was a three-time Big East coach of the Year before the Irish moved to the ACC, where they became less successful recruiting New York Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.– the big cities in the East, which had always supplied blue chip talent to what was then a national independent program under Johnny Dee and Digger Phelps. .
Brey will be the first to say he has been disappointed with his performance this season.
“I defer to our leadership and our captains,” he said. “They do have ownership of themselves, but certainly I haven’t been able to help them much. I just told them, I’ve done a horrible job with you fellows. I thought we would be more ready to compete there.
That’s a boss’s responsibility. Totally accountable.”
Brey was hired by Notre Dame in 2000 after a successful run at Delaware. He had the pedigree to make the leap, having worked as an assistant for both Mike Krzyzewski and Duke and legendary high school coach Morgan Wooten.
Brey chased this job. When he took over for Matt Doherty who went to North Carolina, i 2000, the Irish were mired in an 11-year drought that dated back to Phelps in 1990. Brey changed all that. taking the Irish to the NCAA tournament in each of the first three season, including a Sweet 16 in 2003.
I’ll miss him. We were friends. But it’s time for a change. We keep hearing names like former Notre Dame guard and current Miami Heat assistant Chris Quinn, Porter Moser of Oklahoma, and Drew Valentine of Loyola of Chicago. as possible replacements.
