Micah Shrewsberry calls out Notre Dame for lack of effort in Miami loss

Notre Dame certainly hasn’t enjoyed a great season on the basketball court, but head coach Micah Shrewsberry has made games interesting as he tries to establish his culture in year one of a rebuild.

Shrewsberry has consistently preached one non-negotiable requirement for his players: that the guys on the court bring 100% effort.

In the early going of Notre Dame’s third straight loss, this time at home to Miami, the first-year head coach was livid with the lack of effort, especially on the glass, from his big men, Kebba Njie and Carey Booth. Ultimately, he decided to bench them for the entire second half in favor of a much smaller lineup.

“I mean, I was just disappointed in our effort; really, just our effort level to start the game in the first half,” Shrewsberry stated to open his postgame press conference, noting that his front-court was allowing the Hurricane stars to have their way in the post.

“They got two guys that can rebound. (Norchad) Omier rebounds, Matthew Cleveland rebounds. And we treated Omier like he had some disease that we didn’t want to get close to or we’d get sick, and we just let him operate and do whatever he wanted to. Then, Matthew Cleveland’s in there getting offensive rebounds to start the game and that set the tone for what happened.”

After that poor start from his bigs and an eight-point deficit at the half, Shrewsberry say his two starting forwards for the entire second half, only playing six guys, and only one guys who stood taller than 6’6 in Tae Davis at 6’9.

That group actually flipped the game in the first 11 minutes of the second half, erasing the deficit to even take a three-point lead at one point. However, exhaustion caught up to them and Miami rolled off a 17-2 run to help put the game away after ND took its brief lead.

Afterwards, Shrewsberry even admitted that the guys playing in the smaller lineup were “absolutely” gassed with nine minutes to play. But when asked if he considered subbing Njie and Booth to give the other guys a breather, Shrewsberry said he gave “zero thought” to the idea.

“I’ll stick with the dudes that are going to give me the effort that I want,” he explained. “Maybe I should have called more timeouts to give them a break, but that group established from the start of the second half how hard you needed to play in order for us to win. So I was going to roll with those dudes the rest of the half.”

And he did, to the tune of a 24-9 run over the final nine and a half minutes after ND had gained a 52-49 lead. But there are no regrets for Micah Shrewsberry as he tries to illustrate to his players exactly what it takes to get on the floor.