NCAA Basketball: Ranking best head coaching hires from the year 2000

3. Mike Brey (Notre Dame)

As their head coaching search began in 2000, Notre Dame had been in the Big East for only five years, but hadn’t made an NCAA Tournament or fielded a really great team in ten. Mike Doherty scorned them after just one season to take the dream job at North Carolina (notice his hiring is not on our top 10), leaving Notre Dame to head in a different direction.

Mike Brey was a former assistant to Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, having been on staff as they won national titles in 1991 and 1992. His first head coaching job had taken him to Delaware for the last five seasons, leading those Fightin’ Blue Hens to a pair of NCAA Tournaments. Doherty had gotten Notre Dame going in the right direction, but it’s Brey who really put them over the top in his 20+ years in South Bend.

Notre Dame made the NCAA Tournament in each of Brey’s first three years and that was just the beginning. To date, he’s led the Fighting Irish to 12 NCAA Tournaments, with five NIT bids along the way. The program transitioned into the ACC in 2013 and responded with Elite Eight runs in both 2014 and 2015. Though things have been less fruitful in recent years, Brey remains a legend with this program.