Four roster building priorities for Micah Shrewsberry as he assembles first Notre Dame team

Micah Shrewsberry will make his first public appearance as Notre Dame men’s basketball head coach when he is introduced Thursday morning. Privately, though, he has been at work for about a week.

His to-do list is lengthy. Notre Dame has five returning scholarship players. He has to hire a staff. The transfer portal is operating at optimal mania. It’s not too early to think about the class of 2024 either.

Shrewsberry will be busy over the next several weeks. These four things are likely to be priorities as he builds the roster of his first team.

Find another Jalen Pickett

Shrewsberry’s most important commitment in his two-year Penn State tenure came about six weeks after he was hired. He took over March 15. He landed Siena transfer guard Jalen Pickett April 25. Pickett was a three-year starter who averaged more than 15 points and 6 assists in two non-COVID seasons at Siena. He was a focal point for the Saints. Shrewsberry had the same role in mind for him.

It was a multi-year move. Pickett was a good guard on a middling team in 2021-22, averaging 13.3 points and 4.4 assists in 37 minutes per game. He didn’t spark immediate team success. He did, though, prove to be worthy of building around that offseason. Shrewsberry pulled three grad transfers who were high-end shooters from the transfer portal. He had a creator in Pickett. He needed more supplementary pieces to maximize his impact.

The result was a 23-14 record, the team’s first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2011, first tournament win since 2003 and one of the nation’s best offenses. Pickett was an All-American, averaging 17.7 points, 6.6 assists and 7.4 rebounds on 50.8 percent shooting. Penn State had a deep crop of shooters. He consistently helped them get good shots.

Pickett is high on the list of reasons why Penn State needed only two years to go from program with an interim coach to NCAA Tournament team. Every team that has completed a quick turnaround in recent years has done it with an experienced and skilled guard leading the way. The most recent example: Kansas State does not go from 14-17 to Elite 8 in one year without guard Markquis Nowell, who first-year head coach Jerome Tang inherited last spring and convinced to stay.

The most important task for Shrewsberry in filling out Notre Dame’s roster is to find someone like Pickett. A guard to build around – ideally with multiple years of eligibility left. That player’s biggest impact might not come until his second year. But he can give the program a long-term direction right away.

There won’t be a shortage of options. The portal has more than 1,000 names in it. Shrewsberry has to find the right one, which might be harder than winning the recruiting battle. Shrewsberry waded through the waters to find and target Pickett. The competition was less daunting once he did. Pickett, an undergrad with two years left, chose Penn State over Oregon State.

Determine who on the current roster fits

Shrewsberry’s conversations with the five players he inherited have already begun. As has evaluating them. Whether all five stay is not yet clear. But retaining the ones he likes is just as important as winning recruiting battles for transfers.

Notre Dame’s 2023-24 roster will have little overlap from 2022-23. But the more helpful pieces he finds from the leftovers, the less daunting and extreme the roster overhaul becomes. Penn State’s second-leading scorer this year was Seth Lundy, who stuck around during a coaching change. So did guard Myles Dread, who was one of five Nittany Lions players to average 20 minutes per game this season. Are there a couple players among the five who could have similar futures? That’s for Shrewsberry to determine soon.

It’s hard to imagine him not liking forward Ven-Allen Lubin, who averaged 6.2 points and 4.4 rebounds in 17.4 minutes per game as a freshman this year, shooting 58 percent. Guard signee Markus Burton is coming if Shrewsberry wants him, and there’s no indication of disinterest on the coach’s end. Burton is a three-star prospect and the No. 155 player in the 2023 On3 Industry Ranking.

The other three – sophomore wing JR Konieczny, junior wing Tony Sanders and junior center Matt Zona – have played sparingly. It’s not hard to envision Konieczny eventually becoming a high-end shooter. Zona displayed a newfound 3-point shot when his minutes increased at the end of the season.

Mine the transfer portal

This too has already begun. Shrewsberry has been in touch with several transfers, including Yale forward EJ Jarvis and Virginia center Kadin Shedrick. Both are grad transfers. Penn State hosted St. Francis (Pa.) grad transfer forward Josh Cohen for a visit just days before Shrewsberry took the Notre Dame job.

There will be many others. Notre Dame needs several. Nobody fills six to eight scholarship spots in the spring only on unsigned high school prospects. Finding two or three starting-caliber players and a few capable rotation pieces from the portal is the goal.

The right mix of transfers can be a team’s ticket out of a long rebuild. Ask Kansas State or 2021-22 Iowa State. Or even Wake Forest, which went 13-7 in the ACC in Steve Forbes’ second year (but missed the NCAA Tournament).

The wrong transfer haul, though, can leave a team stuck at the bottom. Minnesota, two seasons into head coach Ben Johnson’s tenure, has yet to move out of the Big Ten cellar. Its transfer-reliant approach hasn’t worked.

Success in the portal requires intentionality. Reading stats or plucking players off mid-major all-conference teams is a poor approach. One of the first rules of going portal plunging is have a vision and stick to it.

Notre Dame can’t use the portal like most other places because getting undergrad transfers into school is trickier. Shrewsberry understands that. But getting the basketball team back on track and building a winner in the portal age will likely require the school to meet him halfway on an undergrad transfer here and there – especially this year with so many holes to fill.

The portal might never be more Notre Dame admissions-friendly than it is now, though. The COVID-19 bonus year has made grad transfers with multiple seasons of eligibility more prevalent. All players who were seniors on Ivy League teams must transfer to use their final season of eligibility because the conference does not let grad students play sports. And all Ivy League seniors have a year left because of the canceled 2020-21 season.

Build a long-term base with freshmen

The options on the high school recruiting market are limited in the spring, because most high-major prospects sign in the fall. There is, though, one market to exploit: signees who were released from their letters of intent after a coaching change.

Perhaps Shrewsberry gets Notre Dame into the mix of a player originally committed somewhere other than Penn State. But even if he only adds the three-man class he signed last fall alongside Burton, that’s a good haul considering the circumstances and timing.

Penn State signed three-star Zionsville (Ind.) guard Logan Imes, three-star State College Area (Pa.) guard Braeden Shrewsberry and four-star Wolfboro (N.H.) Brewster Academy forward Carey Booth in November. Shrewsberry is, of course, Micah’s son. Booth is the highest rated of the three, at No. 74 in the On3 Industry Ranking. Imes is No. 197 and Shrewsberry No. 209. All three have requested releases from their letters of intent. Expect Notre Dame to pursue them.

That trio plus Burton would give Notre Dame four potential long-term pieces who also shouldn’t be counted out from helping right away.

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