Micah Shrewsberry breaks down what he will emphasize while recruiting

The transfer portal has developed into a primary avenue for roster building for many college basketball coaches and programs, especially new head coaches who are stuck building their rosters from scratch after, in most cases, the previous players all used the portal to find new homes once their coach left.

While new Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry has had to lean heavy on the portal in his first offseason with the Irish, his recruiting vision is to rely mostly on high school prospects.

In an interview with college hoops insider Jon Rothstein, Shrewsberry explained that he prefers building organically with guys who commit out of high school and wind up staying deep into their college careers.

“I’ve always talked about how I’m going to recruit high school kids, because you get a chance to know them better,” he told Rothstein. “Like, I’m looking for fits for Notre Dame. I’m looking for fits for me as the head coach at Notre Dame. So, guys that fit our playing style, guys that fit their teammates, you know, who they’re going to be in the locker room. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Of course, you can find those kind of players in the transfer portal, but you’re losing a bit of the intra-program continuity and experience. Shrewsberry wants a group of guys arriving on campus every year that will stick together for 3-4 years.

“And you can find that, right. You can find it in the transfer portal,” said Shrewsberry. “But you can also find it through high school ranks and have your group and be able to grow them together. So this year, for us, has been about trying to balance classes, trying to get back to a little more balance of how traditionally coaches would go about it recruiting.”

Shrewsberry then revealed that his goal is a four-man freshman class on scholarship. As of now, the Irish are at three scholarship guys and a fourth in the coach’s son, Braeden Shrewsberry.

“Now, if we add one more, that’s where we want to be. Now you’d have a four-man freshman class coming in with three guys that had signed with us at Penn State, that we were excited about. One being Carey Booth, who’s made a great rise and continues to grow and get better. Markus Burton, who was Indiana’s Mr. Basketball. So that gives us a true freshman class.”

Shrewsberry now wants to stack classes like that.

“Now, if you can add a class behind them in 2024, that ‘s kind of your group moving forward. You’re continuing to get old, but you’re replenishing what you have. So we may use the transfer portal for needs, but for the most part, we’re going to recruit through the high school ranks.”

There you have it. Under head coach Micah Shrewsberry, Notre Dame will build through high school with the goal of eventually churning out balanced teams led by home-grown veterans each year.