Everything Notre Dame coach Micah Shrewsberry said ahead of games vs. Missouri, TCU

Notre Dame men’s basketball will play a pair of games this week. The Irish (5-3) will host Missouri (8-0) on Tuesday (9 p.m. EST on ESPNU) and head to TCU (5-2) on Friday (8 p.m. EST on ESPN+).

Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry spoke Monday to local reporters to review his team’s three games at the Players Era Championship in Las Vegas last week and look ahead to this week’s games.

Below is a transcript of Shrewsberry’s press conference. Questions may be paraphrased. His answers aren’t.

SEE ALSO: Notre Dame learns lesson in ‘championship basketball’ with 1-2 trip to Las Vegas

Last week was maybe Notre Dame’s first big test. How would you grade it? 

“I don’t know how to grade it, because it was three separate games, none of which were the exact same. I don’t know if we can just group them all into one thing. 

“There’s areas where I thought we did good things. There’s areas where we probably didn’t do good things. We got to keep improving. So, I don’t know. I guess that would be a C, right? If you’re doing good things and not doing good things, you’re somewhere in the middle. I think we’re right in the middle with our performance and what we did. 

“There’s things to build off of. There’s things we got to keep doing and keep improving on. And there’s areas we got to keep growing.” 

Other than just making shots, what can Notre Dame do to start better than what you did against Kansas and Houston? Is it just as simple as a couple of those shots go down and it kind of changes everything?  

“I think so. I think Houston was a little different. We played on our heels from the start. Other than that, how we come out, how we start games, what we do, our shot-making, we got to help each other. It’s something we’ve been working on here since we’ve been back. 

“How do we keep getting better? What do we keep doing? How do we get playmakers and shotmakers on the same page? As we start to grow there, I think that will help us a little bit more. It’s having a consistent group, sticking with what we do and just keep trying to get better, so we start better, so we compete better right from the jump.” 

From a NET standpoint, how important is this week? Is the NET important on December 1st for you? 

“I don’t think we necessarily look at it as NET. Your NET’s going to change. It’s going to move up and down, especially with today being day one. But we have two really good teams that we’re going to play. This isn’t anything to do with the NET. This has to do with us playing better.  

“We had three tests, and now we’ve got two more upcoming. It’s two teams that will test you. Missouri’s a good team. They’re coming here undefeated. [Head coach] Dennis Gates has had them in the tournament two out of the three years he’s been there. They’re feeling good. They’re comfortable. They are one of the best offensive teams in the country right now and one of the best rebounding teams in the country right now. So, it’s a great test.  

“And then you follow it up on Friday with one of the hottest teams in the country in TCU and what they did. It’s all about how we prepare. It’s all about how we play. But you get a chance to see: have we made improvements from the last time out to this time?  

When you look at Missouri and how much height they play, what are some of the ways that you can attack that with your roster?  

“They’re a big team. We’ve played big teams, right? They play in a different way. They’ve been great in the paint. They’re top five in the country in two-point percentage. They’re top five in the country in offensive rebounding. That’s an area where we’ve got to get better. We didn’t handle it well against Kansas or against Houston.  

“This is the next chance to see how do we rebound better against a team that’s big. Just got to play that way. We have some big guys, too. They gotta play big sometimes. But it’s all about our total team effort and seeing that.”  

You talked after the Houston game about seeing what championship basketball looks like. What are some of the areas where you feel like this Notre Dame team needs to improve that make championship basketball?  

“The biggest thing is we cut it to four points and give up an offensive rebound. Those are small things right there. Everybody gives up offensive rebounds. It’s not like we’re the only team in the country not doing it. It’s not like you can’t win a championship if you give up an offensive rebound. But in the guts of the game, those might be the most important plays.  

“Those little details are where we need to increase the most right now. As our details get better, the better we’ll be as a team. Houston plays with championship details in November. That’s why they’re one of the best teams in the country.” 

Do you think that’s maturity or is it effort? How do you coax that out of a group of guys?  

“I don’t think it’s effort. I don’t fault our guys’ effort. I think they’re playing really hard. But also sometimes maybe it’s a maturity thing because they haven’t been there. The dudes that are playing for Houston played in the national championship and probably should have won it.  

“There’s a difference between that and watching somebody do it. You’ve got to do it. And you’ve got to get experience doing it. So playing a team like that gives you the experience to say that’s what championships look like.”  

When you take that into account, you think about the things that you did well last week and balance it against what the record was, how do you feel about last week as a whole?  

“I thought we really guarded. I thought we defended at a pretty good level. We’ve got to do it for longer stretches. We’ve got to take away some of the slight dips here and there. Offensively, we’ve got to get better. That’s what we’ve worked on. How do we do it? How do we do it against better people that are trying to take away some of the things that we do good? 

“That’s where I want to see us continue to grow right now is in that area. How do we get our playmakers and our shotmakers on the same page? I probably counted yesterday as we watched film — the question I asked is, how many extra passes did we make in Vegas? I could probably count it on my hand in three games.  

“That’s who we have to be. We’re not going to out-talent people. We’ve got to out-team people. And that’s how we’ve got to play.  

How big do you think a win would be for Notre Dame to beat another power conference team?  

“As big as it can be. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if it’s Southeast Missouri Tech. We want to win no matter who we play. We’ve also been sitting and watching other people play for about a week, too, so we’re excited to get back out there and get a chance to compete together and see the steps we’ve got to make.” 

What was your message to the team after this entire week?  

“Just keep growing. Today’s December 1st. It was November. We’ve still got a ways to go. I’ve been around teams that have been OK in November and gotten really good at the end of the year. I’ve seen teams that have been really good in November and been terrible at the end of the year. 

“It doesn’t write your story. There’s no ending to our season after going 1-2 in Vegas. You sit back and look at it. We have three losses right now, but we’ve lost to Ohio State, Kansas, and Houston. There’s no shame in doing that.  

“But we’re all competitors, and we want to play at our best. We want to win every single time that we’re out there. We get back on it and figure out how to get the next win, which is the most important thing for us.  

How much growth have you seen in players like Logan Imes throughout this season so far? 

“I don’t want to like do an advertisement — there was a newspaper article that talked about championship teams have elite glue guys. I think Logan is one of those guys.  

“For him to play three minutes against Kansas, but then to turn around and play big minutes against Houston just shows the kind of character that he has and the kind of belief that he has and the belief that we have in him.  

“Sometimes it’s situational how much he may play. But he’s always ready to play. He tries really hard defensively. He’s starting to make some big shots for us and just gives us a calming presence. He’s great to have. He’s a huge part of your culture as a program.” 

How important was it for the young guys to go against Kansas and Houston to see what it takes to play a tournament team like those two? 

“Sometimes that’s your greatest experience. We ended that, and I sat in the locker room, and for a guy like Tommy Ahneman that’s not playing, I said it to him. I hope you’re watching these dudes and you see how hard you’ve got to compete, how physical the game needs to be.  

“It’s easy to sit back and watch it and say, I can do that. It’s a lot harder when you get out there and you get into the mix. It was important for our young guys to go against that and to see it and to say, ‘If we want to be at that level, this is the effort level, the physicality level, the execution level we need to play at.  

You talked about starting the Houston game on your heels. How did you flip that switch after Notre Dame’s down 26-4 to actually compete with them? 

“I don’t know if we were too hyped up to play or too jittery. I don’t know what it was. I told those guys at halftime: there’s no adjustments that need to be made. You can’t adjust until you get to a certain competition level. And once we started competing at that level, then an adjustment might be able to help you. That was the biggest thing right there was just being ready to fight. 

“There’s no excuses. There’s zero excuses. But we’ve been bad on day three, two years in a row. Creighton jumped on us in the same exact way. That’s something we need to figure out for the next time we play a game on day three. How do we be better at the start? That’s on us as a staff to figure out how do we do that. 

“The competition piece, the compete piece, the effort, the energy, that’s all got to be there. That’s the price of admission to play and compete versus really good teams.”