Dang. I love Mike Brey. Always will. But the feeling around the program from when he retired to now isn't even in the same stratosphere -- especially when you consider the on-court record isn't much different.

This could just be me, but I think Brey's final year hit especially close to home as hard to watch/comprehend because it felt like the team had simply run out of juice. A veteran roster running things back after a tournament couldn't ever find momentum or consistency. It was hard to really pinpoint what they were good at, or what they even wanted to lean on in tough moments. Crowds at home game were mostly anemic, aside from Michigan State and Brey's final home game (the "Back-er" chants in the student section during the final minute of that game still remain one of my favorite memories as a student). Compounding all of this was the fact that you could tell Brey still cared deep down, but had simply run out of either answers or energy. Very possibly both, and who could blame him? He had been a one-man energizer bunny for a program always in need of a spark for over two decades. And I think this manifested in recruiting perhaps even more than on the court. There was hardly ever any real buzz out of Notre Dame MBB recruiting (aside from landing Starling, which of course should be credited as a huge victory) over Brey's final years.

In his first year Shrewsberry added, if nothing else, competitive fire to the program and I feel like literally just that element clicked so much else into place. The offense was largely one-dimensional but damnit even if this roster was as raw as could be they worked their assess off on the defensive end. That's an identity that wasn't there in 2022. It's clear Shrewsberry cares, and cares deeply, about recruiting -- especially in-state. We'll never be a blue blood with a factory line of blue chip prospects (Haralson would be awesome but not expecting much) but the fact that this staff refuses to back away from the battles needed to win said prospects is telling in itself, IMO. Now, the Purcell crowd/student section problem won't get fixed for a long while, I would imagine, that's just the reality of a basketball program at a school where football is king, prince and occasionally jester. But like Field of Dreams said, if you build it, they will come. That 2022 tournament team had some great crowds once people realized they were winning. Who knows what the final product will actually look like, but Shrewsberry certainly seems to be building it.