ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 12, 2022

Mike Brey

Dane Goodwin

Cormac Ryan

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Press Conference

Q. Coach, you've got quite a spread of experience on your coaching staff. You've got a lot of guys that are old with Notre Dame. Now you've got some guys that are sort of young with the Fighting Irish. Tell us about your strategy putting the coaching staff together for this year.

MIKE BREY: Well, I think it was a big win bringing Anthony Solomon back to our staff for his third stint. He's gone a great job with our defense, which is an area we needed to really improve on. We've always been able to score at our place, but we've gone in and out of being good enough defensively, so I thought that was an important hire.

And Tony Wyche, who's a Notre Dame grad, rejoined us, and certainly knows Notre Dame. He's a grad and just hired about six weeks ago, well, two months ago.

Hamlet Tibbs.

So we've got a good mix of some older guys, some younger guys, some youth, and kind of like where our staff is now. Then when you have an old team and guys like this, they're kind of on your staff, too.

Q. Dane, speak to being older; what is it you know now about Fighting Irish basketball that you may not have really understood when you came into the program?

DANE GOODWIN: Yeah, I would say just a lot of things. We've had so many ups and downs, close losses, big wins, and just being able to draw experiences off of each of those and put it towards this coming year I think is very beneficial.

And then having great coaches and great teammates around, as well, is going to help.

I think we have a good mix of older and younger guys, and just being able to connect to everyone and helping each other out is going to be very important for this year.

Q. Cormac, last year you scored a single-game record for a Brey-era team of 29 points in the ACC Tournament win over Alabama. You had 45 points in the first two NCAA games of the tournament. We hear about being in a zone, but what's it like for someone on the floor recognizing that maybe he is in the zone?

CORMAC RYAN: It's a great feeling. It's a feeling that you want to replicate as often as possible. Usually it is kind of -- it comes out of nowhere. You don't really know you're in it until you're in it, and the best part about it is when you get a win.

So being able to do your part and make shots, make plays, and then run back into the locker room with a W makes it all that sweeter.

Q. So you want to try to replicate it. Can you force the replication, or does it just come?

CORMAC RYAN: I think "force" would be the wrong word. I think it more so is just allowing it to happen and staying loose and staying free and just believing in yourself, having guys around you who support you like we do.

We play the right way, so it makes it a whole lot easier when you don't have to worry about stuff like that.

Leaning on your teammates, your coaches, and just letting it come.

Q. Coach Brey, does the advent of the NIL change the mindset going forward with any of your players and what they want to do with NBA dreams?

MIKE BREY: Why don't you guys hit that.

CORMAC RYAN: Yeah, if I'm understanding your question, is it with regard to NBA dreams; is that correct?

Q. Yeah.

CORMAC RYAN: Yeah, I mean, I think the NIL developments have been a pretty interesting thing for college basketball. We were just talking about it outside. During the course of our career, me and Dane, we've seen the NCAA make two major rule changes with the transfer portal rule and the NIL rule. That's pretty remarkable.

College basketball is definitely changing a whole lot.

I think for our team, we've got a group of guys who really get along on and off the court. We have guys who are really about the right things. So for us, our goals and our focus remain on basketball and building our team to be the best version of our team possible.

I think a lot of times people talk about jealousy or who's competing for what deals. We don't really worry about that at all. We've got guys who care about the program and are willing to do whatever it takes to make the team better.

I think the NIL for us is just an add-on. It's just a cool opportunity for guys to explore if they feel like they want to explore that, and the rest is really basketball.

DANE GOODWIN: I don't think NIL changes my mindset or anyone else's mindset about the season and potential things after college. Like Cormac said, I think it's a great add-on and a way for college athletes to contribute and have great opportunities for themselves and for their families.

But again, I don't think it changes my mindset. Just there's a task at hand, and that's to play as well as we can and accomplish all the goals that we've set as a team.

Q. Coach, your thoughts?

MIKE BREY: Well, I'm happy to hear these guys express themselves about it, because as the leader, as this is coming at you, you want to have the NIL ammunition to make sure your players and we feel like we are competing in that world and thinking about maxing it out, and that's really been as much a focus of mine as anything in our program since NIL went in a year ago in July.

How do I make sure we are in a position to compete and show these guys we're really serious about it.

I'm happy to say that Notre Dame has been really good with it.

Q. Coach, taking a look at your newcomers, Ven-Allen Lubin and Dom Campbell, one from Orlando, one from Scarborough, Maine. Your recruiting philosophy seems to be scrubbing the East Coast from north to south.

MIKE BREY: Yeah, the East Coast has always been good to us, right, from the Big East days. Certainly Notre Dame has a great eastern pull always, you know, so it's been good.

I think when we joined the ACC, we kind of started going down into the southeast a little bit more. We've always been good D.C. to Boston. That's been a great corridor for Notre Dame.

But now Florida a little bit more, New England has been very, very good to us.

Q. So you've changed your recruiting philosophy over the years a little bit; have you settled into what you think is most comfortable for you?

MIKE BREY: Yeah, I think when I think about where we get guys, I think D.C. to Boston is still an unbelievable corridor, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Chicago suburbs, Michigan a little bit, and Florida lately.

Now, we did get a kid from California in this rotation, but I think that's our wheelhouse, and that's kind of where we've spent our time and have had the best results.

Q. I'm sure you've been coming to this occasion for many years. I don't know how many years it's been, but virtually every time they pick the teams at the end of the day, and it's Duke and Carolina or Carolina and Duke. What do you think the coaching changes at those two schools will do in the short run?

MIKE BREY: Well, I think they've both made great hires in replacing Hall of Fame coaches. I think Hubert proved himself last year, and I thought it was the ultimate proving of himself in that it wasn't going great for a while, and he put it together and worked it out.

I've got a lot of respect for Jon. He is a gifted young coach. I think we all know that he did a lot of coaching the last couple years.

I think Mike really relied on him to do a lot.

You know, I think they're both really strong. Now, somebody turned to me at the Peach Jam and said -- they said, hey, Coach, do you think the two new guys at Duke and Carolina are going to do well? I said, I hope not. But I think they're pretty good.

Q. Dane and Cormac, #protectpurcell; you guys were 14-1 at home last year. We all from the outside looking in can say, yeah, it's important to win at home, but as you are representing the school and representing the folks in that building, tell us how important it is to protect the home house.

CORMAC RYAN: Yeah, Coach talked about it all the time, our home floor has got to mean something to us. It's got our logo on it, and you take ownership in that and you've got to protect it. Last year we did a phenomenal job, obviously 14-1. We want that to be 15-0.

Having the advantage of playing at home, taking care of that floor, taking care of your business at home, it gives a team a certain swagger and attitude to know that when you're coming into our building, it's going to be a sad flight home for you.

DANE GOODWIN: It's obviously very important to win home games, but I think it really started out early in the year. Had a couple big home wins, home non-conference wins, as in Kentucky and some other games.

I think it really carried over into our ACC schedule. We kind of got on a little run, and we were able to have the feeling every time we come home, we're going to be all right. We felt comfortable at home. We practice there a lot. We have so many good games there.

I think it's something that we'll try to carry on into the season.

Q. Coach, 11 of your first 14 games are at home. You're only away from the arena three times before New Year's Day. Does that fit your schedule philosophy?

MIKE BREY: I think that's fine. The thing that kept staring at me as we put the schedule together was we have three ACC games in December. The world has kind of changed with the 20-game schedule and the league coming at you.

You're trying to -- the one thing I can say, and you can get this back to your teams and your regions, please let them know it's going to be a very bad winter in South Bend this year as they travel. Make sure they have their snow plows and parkas and everything. It's going to be really bad.