Micah Shrewsberry addresses Notre Dame's struggles between games, practices

Notre Dame hoops fell once again over the weekend, this time in a narrow home loss to Boston College that left Micah Shrewsberry grasping for answers at another press conference.

The first-year head of the Fighting Irish is down but far from given up. The talent and experience may not be there yet for ND, but slowly and surely, the effort level and defensive intensity are becoming staples of this team. However, even with some real fight against Boston College, offensive droughts ultimately sunk Notre Dame in a tough 61-58 loss.

After the game, Shrewsberry discussed corrections that needed to be made, and was asked at one point if he’s seeing the corrections in practice, or rather, if the team is simply struggling to make progress even behind the scenes.

“I mean, it’s hard to simulate the game in practice, right,” Shrewsberry began his answer. “Like, I love our guys that are on the bench and the walk-ons and and the other guys that are trying to give us a look in practice. But like, none of those guys areas physical as Jaden Zackery, right. Nobody’s out there blocking shots at the rim like Quinten Post, so you can’t simulate it.”

The best Micah Shrewsberry can do is to try and run portions of practice at live game speed.

“You try and put them into the best simulation that you can, but after last game, we talked about: in those moments, in those segments in practice, let’s do it with game speed, because if I don’t go in game speed, then it’s a total surprise for me when I get in there against bigger, stronger, longer athletes that I get to see.”

However, the Notre Dame coach that no matter how closely you simulate live game action, there’s just a whole new element thrown in when the clock is actually running, fans are watching, and the mistakes are permanent and for all to see.

“So that’s just something that we have to change in our approach and how we attack those segments of practice where we’re trying to work against the other team and the other defense. But there’s something there that, when the light clicks on, like, there’s always game slippage. Our game slippage is a little bit greater than it should be.”

After their second loss to BC in the last couple weeks by a combined seven points, Notre Dame now looks forward to road trips at Virginia and Pittsburgh next up on the docket.