Notre Dame Fighting Irish Men's Basketball

From Keogan's gym to the ACC

Basketball at Notre Dame dates to the 1896-97 season, and the programme's first long stability came when George Keogan took charge in 1923. Over 20 seasons he went 327-97-1, a winning percentage of.771, and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1961. The Helms Foundation later awarded Notre Dame retrospective national titles for 1926-27, when the team went 19-1, and for 1935-36, a 22-2-1 season. Moose Krause and John Moir came out of those sides as consensus All-Americans.

The programme spent most of the twentieth century as an independent, scheduling anyone who would play it, before a spell in the Big East. It moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference on 1 July 2013 and has been there since, which is the context for everything that has happened recently: a 9,149-seat arena and an independent-era scheduling tradition now set against Duke, North Carolina and Virginia twice a winter. The all-time record stands at 1,989-1,144-1, with 37 NCAA tournament appearances.

The seasons that still get brought up

Richard "Digger" Phelps ran the team from 1971 to 1991 and finished 393-197. Two results from that period are still the reference points. In 1974 Notre Dame ended UCLA's 88-game winning streak, and in 1978 the team reached the Final Four, where it lost to Duke. Austin Carr and Adrian Dantley were the era's All-American scorers, and both went on to long professional careers.

Mike Brey, in charge from 2000 to 2023, left as the winningest coach in programme history at 483-280. His best run came immediately after the ACC move: the Irish won the 2015 ACC tournament and reached the Elite Eight in both 2015 and 2016. Brey was a national coach of the year in 2011. Pat Connaughton and Blake Wesley are among the alumni who have gone on to the NBA.

Everything after that has been thinner. Notre Dame has not been to the NCAA tournament in four years, a gap confirmed again when the team met reporters in October 2026.

Thirteen wins, then the exodus

Micah Shrewsberry arrived from Penn State in 2023 and is 41-56 across three seasons. The third was the worst. Notre Dame finished 2025-26 at 13-18 overall and 4-14 in the ACC, tied for sixteenth, which meant no place in the conference tournament and no postseason invitation of any kind.

There were nights that suggested something better. The Irish beat Missouri 76-71 in the ACC-SEC Challenge on 2 December, took TCU 87-85 in overtime on 5 December, edged Boston College 68-64 on 24 January and won 96-90 in overtime at NC State on 28 February. Markus Burton carried the scoring, with 24 points against LIU and 25 against Bellarmine, and Carson Towt did the rebounding, including a 19-board night against LIU. The other column was heavier: a 56-66 opening loss to third-ranked Houston on 26 November, a 97-100 double-overtime defeat by Virginia on 27 January, 65-76 to Louisville on 4 February, and a 56-100 loss at home to top-ranked Duke on 24 February. The season ended with defeats by Stanford on 4 March and Boston College on 7 March.

Then the roster emptied. By mid-April 2026 Burton, Jalen Haralson, Cole Certa, Ryder Frost, Garrett Sundra, Sir Mohammed and Kebba Njie had all entered the transfer portal, several with do-not-contact tags attached. Notre Dame's first replacement, Winthrop centre Logan Duncomb, committed on 14 April, a week after the window opened.

Ten newcomers, four survivors

By 25 June the shape of the rebuild was public. Six transfers had been signed — guards Braeden Smith, Devin Brown and Ethan Roberts, forwards Bryce Dortch and Yoro Diallo, and Duncomb, the reigning Big South player of the year — alongside four freshmen. Four players returned: Braeden Shrewsberry, Logan Imes, Brady Koehler and Tommy Ahneman. The staff turned over too, with Kyle Getter leaving for California Baptist, Mike Farrelly promoted to associate head coach, and Tony Rack, Isaiah Thompson and Colin McGettigan added.

The pieces are mid-major production and transfer mileage rather than recruiting-service hype. Duncomb, 6ft 9in, averaged 18.3 points and 8.9 rebounds at Winthrop on 60 per cent shooting. Roberts arrived from Penn having averaged 16.9 points and 3.9 rebounds. Smith, who reached Notre Dame via Colgate and a season at Gonzaga, is the closest thing to a true point guard Shrewsberry has had here, averaging 4.6 assists. Brown came from Davidson after 6.4 points as a freshman, Dortch from Rutgers. Braeden Shrewsberry scored 11.9 points a game last season; Koehler, a top-100 recruit, had 5.6 points and 3.2 rebounds as a freshman. Freshman guard Jonathan Sanderson is the highest-rated of the new intake.

Speaking to reporters on 14 October, Shrewsberry called the group "new and fresh" while noting it is also the oldest he has coached at Notre Dame, and said the priority was better defence and more consistency at both ends. Preview writing in the region has been blunt about expectations — one outlet projected a twelfth-place ACC finish, another noted that opponents are not circling the Irish for any reason other than a likely win.

Rome first, then nine straight at home

The 2026-27 schedule, released on 17 September, is the most unusual in the programme's history. Notre Dame opens against Villanova in Rome on 1 November — the first regular-season game the men's team has played outside the United States — at 9.30am Eastern on FOX, with the two women's teams following at noon on FS1. The trip grew out of the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pope, an Augustinian friar and a Villanova graduate; the players have a planned audience with him before the games, and travel packages sold through On Location included Vatican City access.

From there the Irish go to Las Vegas for a Players Era event on 17-19 November, opening against Florida with Houston or Rutgers to follow, and meet Vanderbilt in the SEC/ACC Challenge. Non-conference opponents include Eastern Illinois, TCU, Ohio State, LIU, Mercyhurst, Stonehill, Le Moyne and SC State. The run that matters for anyone buying tickets is a record nine consecutive home games from 24 November to 6 January.

The ACC slate splits nine home and nine away. Stanford, Virginia Tech, California, Pittsburgh, SMU, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Syracuse and Boston College visit South Bend; Georgia Tech, Duke, Florida State, Virginia, Miami, NC State and Clemson are return trips. The ACC tournament runs 9-13 March 2027 in Greensboro. Rule changes approved on 8 May 2026 lifted the regular-season limit to 32 games and dropped the multi-team event requirement, which is part of why schedules like this one now exist; the ten-second backcourt count is now called at 19 on the shot clock.

What a night at Purcell Pavilion involves

Home games are at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center, which opened in 1968 as the Athletic and Convocation Center and was rebuilt in 2009 in a $26.3 million project funded by a $12.5 million lead gift from Phil Purcell III. Capacity is 9,149, all blue chair-back seats, small enough that the court is close from almost everywhere. The Daktronics centre-hung board arrived in 2010 with four screens of roughly 18ft by 12ft and a circular LED ring. The Rosenthal Atrium is the main entrance and the 16,500sq ft Club Naimoli handles hospitality.

The student section, the Leprechaun Legion, was set up during Brey's tenure to give the arena an organised home end, and it sits behind one basket. The building also hosts the women's basketball and volleyball teams, pep rallies and concerts, so the fit-out is a general-purpose one rather than a basketball shrine.

The season's first look at the new team came in an exhibition against Dayton in the weekend after 14 October, before the squad left for Italy.