Micah Shrewsberry calls out Notre Dame players for playing without urgency

It’s been a difficult season for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and head coach Micah Shrewsberry. That continued on Wednesday night against the SMU Mustangs.

The Mustangs opened the game on a 25-5 run, which put the Irish in a hole they were unable to fight back from. For Shrewsberry, it was frustrating to see his team come out and start an important game without a sense of urgency.

“Just like for us, the last two days, the word that’s been on our whiteboard and what we’ve talked about in huddles and everything else is just urgency,” Shrewsberry said. “And we just didn’t have it. We just didn’t bring it. And I talked to our guys in the locker room about, you know, we’re in new territory.”

By halftime, SMU had a 50-25 lead so even with an improved effort by Notre Dame in the second half, it wasn’t good enough to come back in the game. Notre Dame got out-rebounded by 23 total rebounds and turned the ball over 12 times while allowing the Mustangs to shoot 58.6 percent from the field.

This has been part of two difficult seasons for Micah Shrewsberry at Notre Dame. He’s now 24-35 during his time at Notre Dame with five games to go in the 2024-25 regular season.

“Last year’s team, there might’ve been times at [North] Carolina, a couple other places where we just got blown out,” Shrewsberry said. “And we’re less talented than other people. But we continued to fight, we continued to scratch, we continued to claw. But this was the first time I haven’t seen this group have that same fight at the start. We had it late. I’m proud of the guys that — different guys stepped up and played hard in the second half, but we didn’t play with any sense of urgency.”

With the loss to SMU, the Irish fell to 5-10 in the ACC this season and 11-15 overall. They’ll have five games to finish the season strong and with that sense of urgency that Shrewsberry is looking for out of his team.

“And that’s on me for not getting them ready. We have five guaranteed games left. You’re not guaranteed tomorrow, let alone what happens in March some time. So, like, don’t take anything for granted,” Shrewsberry said. “And that’s, for me, that’s the most disappointing thing. We can get beat. People can out-execute us. People can out-talent us. They can do a lot of things, but they should never out-effort us.”

Next up, Notre Dame will begin its final road trip of the season on the road against the Pitt Panthers.