Micah Shrewsberry reacts to big recruiting wins for Notre Dame basketball

Micah Shrewsberry likes the roster he is building for the future as he prepares to enter his second season as the Notre Dame men’s basketball coach. The Fighting Irish have already secured a trio of top 100 commits in the 2025 class, including five-star small forward Jalen Haralson.

That puts Notre Dame at No. 4 overall in On3’s Team Recruiting Rankings. Speaking with media in a Tuesday press conference, Shrewsberry spoke on what the recent recruiting wins mean to him as he tries to build the program.

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“I think the most rewarding is just seeing the hard work pay off,” the coach explained. “Sometimes, you have no clue. Somebody I was talking to earlier said it’s like turning on a faucet. Once you turn it on, it can get rolling. But if it never gets turned on, that’s a struggle too. We were at a struggle for a while. 2025 has been a slower cycle for recruiting across the country. So you never know what’s gonna happen.

“It just so happened for us one time. But the payoff, the hours that you put in, the time, but also the plan. This has been, since I got the job last year, what we’ve pointed towards and what we’ve tried to do. Now we’re kind of seeing that come to fruition a little bit.”

Each of Notre Dame’s four commitments – also SF Ryder Frost, PF Brady Koehler, and C Tommy Ahneman – carry at least a four-star ranking by at least one major recruiting service. Haralson comes in as the No. 13 overall player in the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

Notre Dame is coming off of a 13-20 in Shewsberry’s inaugural season. The Fighting Irish are 93-98 over the past six years with only one NCAA Tournament appearance during that span.

The first season from Shrewsberry showed a lot still to work on, but the coach also saw flashes of potential from his team. The more the show that growth, the more recruiting wins will come as well.

“I think that growth is what we’re pointing towards,” he said. “I don’t know if they could always see it, but you can in stretches and now see it more consistently. But we continue to keep building. What we want to do is stack good classes on top of good classes and keep adding good players. I love the foundation that we have. We’re getting back to a little bit of old school where you feel good about your seniors next year. You feel good about the junior class that will be there. You feel good about the freshmen now that will be sophomores and the group that’s coming in.

“You keep stacking classes together of guys that fit. Now your vision can start to come out for everybody to see it instead of just being my vision and showing a couple of people. Now more and more start to see it, start to buy into it and start to believe in it.”

With the four commits it has in the upcoming class, Notre Dame is set to have 13 scholarship players on its roster for the 2025-26 season. Men’s basketball rosters are reportedly expected to expand to 15 scholarship players beginning a year from now.

That will leave a couple more spots for the Fighting Irish to work with, but even then, Shrewsberry isn’t sure he will use the full amount.

“You have to sell opportunity,” he said. “I think if you get to 15 scholarships, it’s hard to sell opportunity. You’re just asking for people to transfer. Because if I tell you you have an opportunity and there’s 14 people on the roster next to you, you’re like, ‘How? When? Where?’ But we can point to it, I think, so it’s a constant math problem to figure out what’s best.

“We always want to do what’s best for out university and we always want to do what’s best for our program. Sometimes that’s not going to that number because we want to retain our guys. How do we retain them? We show them that they have an opportunity to play here. You can do that when it’s not a full boat.”