After 23 seasons in South Bend, Mike Brey has recently announced that he will retire at the end of the current season, ending a more than two-decades-long run as head coach at Notre Dame Basketball. Brey was hired to replace Matt Doherty way back in 2000 and has won nearly 500 games for the Fighting Irish, leading the program in the Big East and later into the ACC.
Brey played high school ball at the famed DeMatha High School under Morgan Wootten, the same place where he would later begin his coaching career as an assistant. His college ball came under the radar at Northwestern State and George Washington, and he really jumped onto the scene as one of Mike Krzyzewski’s assistants at Duke. He was hired by the Blue Devils in 1987 and was part of their first two national title teams in the early 90’s.
Brey’s head coaching career began in 1995 when he was tabbed as the new head coach at Delaware, a school back then in the America East. He won 67% of his conference games across five seasons with the Fightin’ Blue Hens, leading them to NCAA Tournament appearances in 1998 and 1999. It was just over a year later when he was brought to Notre Dame and where he would spend the majority of his coaching career.
He’d lead Notre Dame to 13 NCAA Tournament appearances across more than two decades. He took the Fighting Irish to NCAA Tournament victories in each of his first three seasons, including a Sweet Sixteen in 2003. Though they never won the conference, they were always a tough foe in the old Big East. His best teams came shortly after joining the ACC, as his 2015 squad won 32 games and advanced to the Elite Eight, a feat they would repeat the following season.
Recent years have been less successful for the Fighting Irish, who have finished below .500 in two of the last four seasons and have been 10th or lower in the ACC in three of the last five seasons. With the way this season was trending, it’s not a big surprise that Brey is calling it quits, even after the surprise success of last year’s team, which tied for 2nd in the ACC and won their first-round Tourney game, though it was their first appearance in five years.
Now, Notre Dame has their first head coaching search in nearly a quarter century and will no doubt want to get it right. If they’re lucky, they can find the next coach to build and sustain consistent success for years to come. However, the Fighting Irish will likely want a coach who can take this program to the next level. We’ll be looking closely at a number of early candidates who might be on Notre Dame’s early radar.