Quick hitters: Where has Notre Dame men’s basketball grown most in season’s first month?

In Notre Dame head men’s basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry’s first year at the helm South Bend, he’s emphasized growth. It’s not necessarily how many wins the Irish wind up with; it’s how different they look from November to March.

A month into the regular season, Shrewsberry was asked where Notre Dame has grown the most so far. Here’s what he had to say, along with three other quotes from after the Irish beat Western Michigan 86-65.

On where Notre Dame has grown the most in the season’s first month

“I don’t know. We’ve emphasized the defensive end so much, and we still — maybe I’m a tough critic or a tough judge, but I didn’t feel like we played great defensively tonight and they scored 65. There’s mistakes, like Miami had 62 and they probably had three pick-sixes, where we just threw it to them and they went down and dunked. 

“We’re guarding people, we’re getting people into the right shots that we want to take. We’re a really good defensive rebounding team so far. That part there is what we’ve hung our hat on. It’s given us a chance to be in every game, except for the Auburn game. We’ve been in every single one. Our mistakes have killed us in stretches. We’ve turned the ball over way too much, like, to see 13 turnovers is encouraging, even though I’d love for us to be at 10 or under. But to see 13, it’s not 16, it’s not 20. That’s an area where we gotta keep growing.

“We’ve hung our hat on the defensive end to give us a chance. That’s all we need, is a chance to hang in there. And then there’s nights when we can really score, where now we gotta come through and win it. But for a young team, like, we don’t recognize actions. Man, I could stand in practice and I’m yelling, like I saw a clip on [assistant] coach [Mike] Farrelly showing out of bounds today, and it’s a play that everybody in America runs from middle school through college. And I just see them line up and I know exactly what’s coming. And then we go walk through and our guys have no idea. I’m like, ‘Come on, man!’ [Western Michigan head coach] Dwayne Stephens is not the only person in America running this play.

“For a team that doesn’t see the game or understand it defensively yet, we’re really guarding. And that’s just purely effort right now. It’s just purely effort. We’ll keep getting better at recognizing situations, recognizing plays. They beat us on two plays in the second half. They ran two plays. And we still didn’t understand what was going on, what was happening.

“Wait ‘til we start understanding what’s going on, and seeing it, and talking to each other. Holy smokes! We might be okay.”

On how he coaches sophomore F Kebba Njie amid his struggles

“I still understand that he has to play with a brace, so he’s not catching the ball. He can rebound the ball with two hands, but right now, he’s playing with one hand and three fingers, so he’s not catching it the way he should. And once you struggle, obviously you just get a little down on yourself as well. So there’s a delicate balance of keeping them motivated, but also giving them that belief.

“We still gotta throw the ball to him. When he does catch it, he’s not always getting us something, but he drew 3 fouls. Like, he’s getting someone out of the game. Somebody’s absorbing those fouls and getting us into the bonus. And now we’re shooting more free throws. It’s helpful for us to throw it to him still, even when he struggles. So that belief that, ‘Hey man, we’re gonna keep going to you. You gotta be better.’”

On the team’s hatred of losing

“It’s either who you are or it’s not who you are. You can’t turn that on and off. I guess they see me, too. I hate losing. Hate it. I’m not a guy you wanna be around after a loss, at least that day. I get better as the days go on, but you want guys like that. You want guys like that. That’s a culture thing right there, like, you got to recruit to that. Those are the guys we tried to bring in, guys that are gonna do whatever it takes for us to end up on the winning side. And when it doesn’t happen that way, we can learn from it, but we ain’t gonna like it, I can tell you that much.”

On if he’s concerned about Notre Dame fouling too much against Western Michigan

“No. We’re one of the best teams in the country at not fouling, at sending people to the free-throw line. Some of those fouls were — they were dumb. I was talking to [freshman guard] Markus [Burton], like, we don’t need any more assistant coaches. I don’t. I got a lot of them over there. I need you on the court, I need you to play, but still being a young player, you turn it over and then he comes down and fouls. Right before the half, he fouls twice and now he’s at 3. If he doesn’t foul those two times, he can challenge that shot when he turns it over in the second half and it’s inconsequential. But because he did foul those two times, that meant a lot. Now he’s sitting on the side for a long time.

“We’ll take aggressive fouls, but not silly fouls. We can’t have the silly fouls, because those put them in the bonus. I thought at the end of the half, we had silly fouls. And they got free throws at the end and cut into that lead. I keep telling them, we have to save those silly fouls because we need the aggressive fouls. We gotta hit people, and every once in a while, we’re gonna get a moving screen. Every once in a while, we’re gonna get a box-out screen. But those are aggressive fouls, and we’ve done a good job of playing without fouling. Tonight was the one time we didn’t.”