Micah Shrewsberry speaks after winning first game as Notre Dame coach
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Micah Shrewsberry has changed jobs quite a bit in his career. It’s gotten to a point where his family now has a tradition of taking a picture on the court after his first game coaching for a new team. That’s exactly what happened after Notre Dame beat Niagara, 70-63, in his program debut.
Before he could celebrate with his loved ones though, Shrewsberry had the duty of addressing the media. He came into the media room after Markus Burton and Julian Roper II had their own interview session. As one might imagine, he was in a good mood, so it’s unlikely he was too bothered about having to handle one of the duties that comes with his job.
A lot of questions were asked, and Fighting Irish Wire was able to get a couple of them in. Here is Shrewsberry’s opening statement and the answers to the two questions we asked:
Opening statement
“I talked to our guys in the locker room, and I just said on the radio, too, ‘Winning’s hard, man. Winning’s hard.’ I’ve been a part of teams that lost a lot. I’ve been part of teams that won a lot. So when we walk in that locker room, no matter what the score is, no matter how you played, how much you played, man, you celebrate winning. … All those teams are trying to win, and the way college basketball is shaped now is…I looked at Niagara’s roster, and I pulled it up weeks ago, and I’m like, ‘Fifth-year, fifth-year, senior, senior, transfer, transfer,’ and I’m like, ‘We’re playing young kids against these older guys.’ And they did a great job. They executed. Greg Paulus is a good coach, man. They run system, and they slowed it down to a crawl, and they executed, and they made us guard. And I thought we had some guys rise to the challenge when we needed to get some tough spots there.”
How success is defined with this year's roster
“Playing hard every single day. If we do that – we’re getting better every single day and trying to win the next game one possession at a time – success is gonna happen. I didn’t come in here thinking, like, we were gonna beat Niagara by 40 points tonight. I knew how good Niagara was gonna be, and I knew how young we are. Every game’s gonna be tough for us. Every single day. We don’t have a huge margin for error, so our details (have) gotta be really good. Our discipline’s gotta be really good, and if we’re doing that, we’ll have success. We’ll have success. I’m not putting numbers on anything. I wanna play our best basketball in March, and we’re a long way from (that), but you see signs of us having success and doing good things together with offense and defense. So I don’t even know what that is. I’ll let you know at the end of the year whether we have success or not. … I didn’t come in here to tell you, ‘This was a failure.’ Right? I’m not here to say it. Honesty is probably my greatest weakness.”
On the Purcell Pavilion crowd during his first game
“It’s really cool for me. I appreciate everybody that showed up. Everybody. I ask people to just give us a chance, and I thought this crowd was great and who showed up. I thought our student turnout was really good. I get so locked in with what’s happening. I don’t notice the crowd, how loud it gets, but as I was walking off, somebody told me that it got pretty loud in here at times, and man, I appreciate our fans for that so much. Right? Like, they didn’t have to come. They didn’t have to cheer. They didn’t have to do any of that, right? Like, sometimes, some places make you prove it, make you earn it. They didn’t. They showed up. They showed up, and I hope they respected how we play ’cause that’s all we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make them proud. We’re trying to make all these former players that I talked to and I got texts from leading up to today – we’re trying to make those guys proud. We’re trying to represent and make anybody that’s wearing that Notre Dame – we’re trying to make them proud with our effort and how we play, the togetherness that we play and I hope we did that today.”
