SOUTH BEND — Where are we going?
Nobody knows where the next six months will go for the 2024-25 Notre Dame men’s basketball team. Coming off a season in which it went 13-20 (with those 20 losses for a second straight year for the first time in program history) and 7-13 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, many might dismiss this season as another meh season under second-year head coach Micah Shrewsberry.
But …
Optimism abounds around Rolfs Hall.
There’s talent. There’s young talent. There are old guys to show the young guys the way. There’s even more young talent on the way with a 2025 recruiting class that will be considered among the nation’s best. There’s momentum behind everything Irish men’s basketball. There’s a lot to like about the way Shrewsberry is building back a program that a decade ago reached consecutive NCAA Tournament Elite Eight appearances.
It may not generate much fall buzz, especially on a campus where college football is king, but something’s happening around Notre Dame men’s basketball. Feel it? See it? Come along for the ride.
Following are six predictions (with a bonus) about what the next six months of planning and practices and games and travel hold for Notre Dame men’s basketball in 2024-25.
☘ Micah Shrewsberry will hit elite recruiter status
A big deal will be made next week when Notre Dame rolls out its Top 10 2025 signing class of one five-star (Jalen Haralson) and three four-stars (Tommy Ahneman, Ryder Frost, Brady Koehler), and understandably so.
For more than a month, that class was considered by many recruiting services as the nation’s best. Better than Duke (before the Boozer Brothers committed. Better than Kansas. Better than Connecticut and better than Kentucky. Better than anyone in college basketball.
That means something for the present and immediate future of the Irish program, but it likely means little to Shrewsberry. It’s what he expected when he arrived in March 2023. He was going to recruit like his hair was on fire (even though he doesn’t have much of it) and get to guys and to places that the program rarely got to. He did it with Haralson, who might be Notre Dame’s second one-and-done (Blake Wesley). He did it down in Indianapolis with Koehler and out in New England with Frost and up in the Upper Midwest with Ahneman. He built that class over eight exhaustive and exhilarating days in September.
Everyone will make a big deal about these prospects. Shrewsberry won’t. He’ll say some good things about the group, then go back to recruiting work. A No. 1 class? He believes Notre Dame should be in that recruiting neighborhood every year.
The exception then becomes the norm now.
☘ Guard Matt Allocco’s addition is critrical, but he won’t reach the one-year transfer bar at Notre Dame
Word around the program first rumbled in June that Allocco, a former Princeton guard who finished last season as the rare 50-40-90 percentage unicorn (50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3, 90 percent from the line), might be the most impactful one-year addition in men’s basketball history.
That’s some elite company. Elite winners.
Allocco is everything this program wasn’t last year – loud, confident, talkative, brash, confident, secure in who he is, confident, competitive, experienced, relentless and fearless. And confident. He’ll start. He’ll be a key locker room guy. He’ll be a voice of reason in huddles when it goes sideways. He’ll make everyone around him better. Already has.
But the one-year transfer bar at Notre Dame is ridiculously high, which Allocco may not clear. In 2021-22, Yale graduate transfer Paul Atkinson parlayed his one season in South Bend into an All-ACC honorable mention spot while helping Notre Dame go 24-11 overall, finish a school record 15-5 in the ACC and nearly make it to the Sweet 16. He was fabulous (IYKYK).
Nearly 20 years earlier, graduate transfer swingman Dan Miller walked away from a Maryland program on the verge of winning a national championship to hit a personal reset button in South Bend. He stepped into the starting lineup as a one-year rental and drove Notre Dame to its first Sweet 16 in 16 seasons. He was a lot like Allocco – brash, confident, experienced, etc.
Allocco will be good this year, just not Atkinson-Miller good.
☘ Myriad starting lineups are coming
Say this for Shrewsberry about his first season – his starting five was set more in sand than stone. He wasn’t afraid to mix it up in terms of that starting group, even yanking his oldest son, Braeden, on two separate occasions when he struggled as a starter.
The head coach isn’t afraid to say, this ain’t working, so come have a seat.
Notre Dame started nine different lineups, the most common starting 10 games together. Nine different players all started at least three games. Only one, eventual ACC freshman of the year Markus Burton, started all 33. There were dozens of reasons why Shrewsberry started this guy over that guy or that guy over this guy. There was injury. There was ineffectiveness.
There’s a method to his sometimes seemingly made scientist starting lineup madness. He did it last year and will do it again this year with a roster that’s deeper, more versatile and honestly, better than the 2023-24 group.
☘ Home will finally again be a happening
It’s been too long since Purcell Pavilion was a place where a string of opponents arrived and two hours later, left with an L. Remember those days? When the old dome was packed long before tipoff? When it was difficult to think with the joint jumping? Those days when the band and the salty we’re-not-showing-up student body and the sleepy season-ticket holders were 200 percent invested in every second of those 40 minutes?
Notre Dame needed to rebuild its culture and its roster when Shrewsberry arrived. It did. Now, it’s go time on the home environment. No more silly timeout promos and sideshows. No more gimmicks. Make the games, the moments, the history matter. The Irish were 9-8 at Purcell last season. Notre Dame knows it must be better, especially in league play (5-5).
It’s been too long since Notre Dame beat a ranked team at home. It happens this year for the first time under Shrewsberry (we’re looking at you, North Carolina).
It’s no longer OK to be just OK at home.
☘ Notre Dame will boast the best backcourt in the conference
When this subject arrives in ACC hoops circles, Notre Dame rarely gets mentioned, OK, it never gets mentioned. It’s Duke and Clemson and North Carolina and Wake Forest. Maybe Pittsburgh. All may be true, but don’t sleep on the backcourt behemoth of Burton, Shrewsberry and Allocco. Throw in freshman guard Sir Mohammed and stand that quartet next to any group of guards in the league and compete. Win.
It’s fascinating watching Burton, Allocco and Mohammed initiate offense. Then watch Shrewsberry figure out workable ways to slide open beyond the 3-point line and take the ball to the basket more than he did last year. Watch how they control everything. It’s not just Burton with the ball, but off the ball. It’s Allocco making plays. It’s Muhammed figuring it out. It’s Shrewsberry knocking down shots. It’s everything that good guards – elite guards – can be.
These Notre Dame guards will be elite.
☘ March will matter
That doesn’t mean you start planning a watch party for Selection Sunday. This program has taken steps since it was last in the tournament in 2022, but Notre Dame’s not yet in that territory.
Still, the Notre Dame name will lurk around the perimeter of tournament mock brackets. Last team in. First team out. First four out. That’s the neighborhood Notre Dame will live in as January becomes February and February becomes March. Good enough to dream NCAA tournament dreams, but not good enough – not yet – to live it.
That’s fine. This program feels a year away from earning an invite to the only postseason tournament that matters. Still, postseason basketball is in play for this program. A deep dive through the National Invitation Tournament – with the Final Four down U.S. 31 at Hinkle Fieldhouse – is a fantastic next step to set more of the foundation for a future where the NCAA tournament is an every-year reality. It will happen. Just not this season.
One last prediction …
Notre Dame goes 18-13 overall, 12-8 and seventh in the ACC after being picked 10th in preseason. It might not be enough to make the NCAA tournament, but it is another step that needs to be taken before getting to the post-season good stuff.
For this group, for this season, that’s fine.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on Twitter: @tnoieNDI
