How two prominent coaching mentors helped shape Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry
The origins of Brad Stevens’ respect for Micah Shrewsberry’s basketball mind trace back to AAU open gyms in Indianapolis and the old Division III Indiana Collegiate Athletic Conference. The two met as high school players and AAU teammates in 1995. They were college competitors in the late 1990s, Shrewsberry at Hanover and Stevens at DePauw.
“It was obvious then he was a guy you wanted to play with, because he knew how to play, get everybody the ball and made his team better,” Stevens said in 2021. “Then I played against him in college, and it was the same thing.”
He and Shrewsberry plunged into coaching on paths that immediately diverged. Stevens’ breakthrough arrived first, when Butler elevated him from assistant to head coach in 2007. Shortly after, he hired that former heady guard who had remained his friend.
Shrewsberry and Stevens spent 10 seasons together, four with Butler and six with the Boston Celtics from 2013-19. The list of Shrewsberry influences starts with Stevens, now the Celtics’ president of basketball operations and their head coach from 2013-21. Shrewsberry took tactics and philosophies from his decade with Stevens on his own head coaching journey, which began at Penn State in 2021 and led him to Notre Dame this offseason after guiding the Nittany Lions to their first NCAA Tournament in 12 years.
“Basketball-wise, a lot of what we do is similar to what we were doing at Butler and what we were doing in Boston,” Shrewsberry said Thursday at his Notre Dame introduction. “I borrow a lot of those philosophies.”
More impactful, though, was Stevens’ character and affability.
“What I learned in that time,” Shrewsberry said, “is the genuineness of who he is, how he treats people, how he treats people on staff, how you communicate with players, how you get the best out of your players, how you mold a team.”
It hasn’t stopped since Shrewsberry left the Celtics. Shrewsberry says he calls Stevens every other day. Sometimes they talk about strategies or games they just played. Other times, it’s player development or non-basketball topics.
“He’s there for you,” Shrewsberry said. “Brad texts after the losses. Nobody texts you when you get beat.”
Recently, the topic turned to job advice. Penn State’s bowed out of the NCAA Tournament March 19 with a loss to Texas in the second round. Notre Dame already had Shrewsberry atop its wish list of Mike Brey replacements. Athletics director Jack Swarbrick ramped up the pursuit after the season ended. The job appealed to Shrewsberry because it would take him home to Indiana. He felt the school fit him. But he wanted to hear voices other than his own.
He called Stevens, who echoed his thoughts.
“We’re both Division III guys,” Shrewsberry said. “That’s probably part of my attraction for who I recruit, what kind of schools I want to work at. I know the value of education, I know what it can do for you. But you can also have a lot of success playing basketball at the same time.
“You probably can’t be good at three things – something has to take a back seat. But you can be really good at those two things if you want to be. That’s why this was so attractive. Brad felt the same way. He probably already has a bag full of Notre Dame stuff sitting in his living room right now.”
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Shrewsberry left Stevens’ Celtics staff to steer closer to a head-coaching job in college, where his heart and his head were guiding him all along. An NBA stint with Stevens served its purpose. He parachuted back to college basketball six years older and smarter. He wanted a launching point. He found it with a familiar face.
Purdue head coach Matt Painter hired Shrewsberry off Stevens’ Butler staff in 2011, giving him his first taste of high-major basketball. He brought Shrewsberry back in 2019, aligned on helping him achieve his head-coaching dreams.
“He could have done that in the NBA, but could he have gotten the opportunity?” Painter told Big Ten Network. “That was our whole game plan when he left the Celtics to come back – to help us at Purdue, but also help him become a head coach.”
That meant Shrewsberry continuing to learn, but also Painter giving him leeway and more responsibility – perhaps before he was fully ready. There were successes. There were flops. Painter was there to help him understand why something worked or why it didn’t.
“He let me experiment and do things,” Shrewsberry said. “He let me bring ideas. He was so comfortable that it was OK. There were things that maybe didn’t work or we failed, that I messed up. He took all the heat for that. But he was trying to continue to push his program forward. I thank him so much for that.”
Those two years with Painter helped push Shrewsberry to the top of Penn State’s list in 2021. The Nittany Lions hired him, therein turning Painter from colleague and confidant to competitor. That was irrelevant to Painter, though, whose investment in Shrewsberry’s success didn’t stop when he headed east.
“We were in the same league, and I’d call him all the time,” Shrewsberry said. “I called him once a week, once every two weeks, and we’re talking about different things. Nobody does that in league. That’s just the kind of person he is and the relationship we have.”
Notre Dame is a new stop with its own set of challenges. New players. New campus. New school culture. It’s also a rebuild of a team that went 11-21 and had four returning scholarship players on the day Shrewsberry was hired.
There will surely be more bumpy days than better ones early on. But he knows he has two mentors to call if he needs advice for navigating them.
“Those two guys,” Shrewsberry said, “are on speed dial for me.”
