The way Notre Dame coach Micah Shrewsberry is going about building his program would make the elementary and middle school versions of himself proud.
Back in those days, Shrewsberry felt what Indiana basketball was like. He loved it. He also lived it as a season ticket holder at Jeffersonville High School, where he would sit next to the home locker room. Whenever that team played, Shrewsberry was there. So was the rest of Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Now Shrewsberry wants to bring that feeling to Notre Dame, which has rostered at least five Indiana products in each of his first two seasons. Before he got to South Bend, the Fighting Irish hadn’t had that many Hoosier natives since Mike Brey’s 2014-2015 Elite Eight team. “I’m an Indiana kid,” Shrewsberry says. “I’ve grown up here and played college basketball here and coached all over this state in different programs. So I have a lot of ties here and I think that bringing more awareness back to Notre Dame basketball for people in the state and creating some kind of buzz [is a goal].”
Shrewsberry knows that bringing in local players won’t matter if they’re not good enough to win. The team went 13-30 in his first season and the coach is under pressure to make progress. Now, it looks like Shrewsberry might have the best of both worlds. With less than a week until the beginning of the early signing period, Notre Dame’s four-man freshman class is ranked No. 4 nationally by 247Sports. It includes two Indiana players — Jalen Haralson, a 6-foot-7 wing who grew up in Anderson, Ind., and plays for La Lumiere School in La Porte; and 6-foot-8 forward Brady Koehler from Indianapolis. Haralson is ranked No. 14 in the 247Sports Composite rankings, making him the highest-rated recruit in program history.
Haralson provided some proof of concept for Shrewsberry, who ultimately beat out Indiana and Michigan State to get him. “I think they got their stronghold within the state,” says Dave Clarke, who coached Haralson and Koehler’s for the Indy Heat AAU program. “I see that staff being able to recruit anybody in the Midwest and anybody in the state of Indiana against any team.”
One of the basic rules in recruiting is to recruit what you know. Brey is from the Washington, D.C. area and played and coached at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Md. Those deep-rooted relationships in the northeast landed him foundational players like Pat Connaughton, Jerian Grant and Bonzie Colson. Shrewsberry, too, is emphasizing his natural roots, which is smart given that Indiana has always been generous in supplying quality talent.
“I’m comfortable recruiting here in the state of Indiana. I’ve grown up here and played college basketball here and coached all over this state in different programs,” Shrewsberry says. “Coach Brey was a D.C. guy, no offense to that. There are really good basketball players there and he had a lot of success bringing guys from there. But, he kind of went to where he was comfortable recruiting.”
Brey proved that there are good local players who want to suit up for the Irish, most notably South Bend natives Demetrius Jackson and Blake Wesley. Shrewsberry tried to recruit Wesley to Purdue while he was an assistant there. “He has that aura about him, the relationship about him that most of these young kids can relate to,” Wesley’s dad Derrick says. That relatability was a big factor in Koehler’s decision. “Without even playing for [Shrewsberry] yet I already feel like I am close with him,” he says. “The entire staff is just so easy to connect with.”
Besides growing up in Indiana, Shrewsberry has spent most of his coaching career there. He spent two years as head coach at Indiana University South Bend, an NAIA school, and seven years as an assistant at Butler under Brad Stevens. Shrewsberry followed Stevens to the Boston Celtics before returning to Purdue in 2019. He then spent two years as the head coach at Penn State, where last year he took the Nittany Lions to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Shrewsberry understood he would have to rebuild Notre Dame’s program after it emptied out following Brey’s retirement, but there were times last season when he couldn’t help but let his frustrations show. “This culture is getting built the right way and if you ain’t a part of it, you’re out,” Shrewsberry said after a 65-45 loss to The Citadel on Dec. 19. “If you don’t play hard you can sit and rot over there on the bench and I’ll find a way. I’ll go and talk to the people over there in compliance and I’ll help you transfer.”
The message apparently got through because the Irish won five of their last eight regular season games. The team returned seven scholarship players and lost just three transfers, only one of whom was a consistent starter. That’s a sign that Shrewsberry is building a sustainable culture. “I always say we wanna play good basketball,” he says. “Good basketball to me is being unselfish, having guys that can all dribble and pass and shoot and play fundamental basketball and then play the game by sharing the ball and playing with some joy.”
Shrewsberry is looking to bring the Irish back to the NCAA Tournament for just the second time since 2017, but like every coach, he is also looking to build his program’s long-term future. With an elite recruiting class about to come on board, there is reason to believe that Notre Dame has some real momentum — and it’s home-grown to boot. “I get to represent one of the major programs in this state and I’m an Indiana kid and that’s something that’s pretty cool,” Shrewsberry says. “It means a lot to me.”
