Micah Shrewsberry says it's still 'surreal' being Notre Dame's head coach

At the end of March, former Penn State Nittany Lions head coach Micah Shrewsberry left Happy Valley and headed to South Bend, IN, to become the new head coach of the Notre Dame men’s basketball team. Fast forward to now, two months after his decision, and the whole thing is still surreal to Shrewsberry.

“Yeah, it really is. You know, there’s days where I just kind of pinch myself, and I’m like, dang, I’m the head coach at Notre Dame. And I’ve had a pretty fast rise up to this level. But it’s something that I’m really looking forward to. I’m really looking forward to representing Notre Dame the right way,” said Shrewsberry during a recent interview on College Hoops Today with Jon Rothstein.

It makes sense that Shrewsberry is still on cloud nine after taking over the reins of Notre Dame’s basketball program. The Fighting Irish head coach has some strong ties to Indiana, stemming back to his days as a youth. He attended Cathedral High School in Indianapolis and played college basketball at Division III Hanover College in Hanover. Shrewsberry also worked as an assistant coach at D-III Wabash from 1999-2000 and DePauw from 2001-03 before becoming the head coach at Indiana-South Bend from 2005-07.

After the 2007 season, Shrewsberry spent three years as an assistant at Butler from 2008-11 before working at Purdue from 2011-13. From there, he worked for the Boston Celtics from 2013-19 and returned to West Lafayette from 2019-21 under Matt Painter. Penn State was Shrewsberry’s first Division I head coaching opportunity, and he totaled a 37-31 overall record in two seasons in Happy Valley.

Shrewsberry is stepping in and taking over after former Fighting Irish head coach Mike Brey announced prior to the end of the 2022-2023 season that he would be stepping away from his duties as head coach. Brey spent 23 years as Notre Dame’s head coach, which included a record of 481- 268, 13 NCAA tournament appearances, reaching the Elite Eight twice, and winning the ACC tournament once in 2015.

Shrewsberry was Penn State’s head coach from 2021-2023. During his two years with the Nittany Lions, he recorded 37 wins and 31 losses. Shrewsberry had Penn State on an upward trend, going from a 14-17 record in his first year to a 23-14 record in its second year, and complementing their regular season success with a berth in the Men’s NCAA Tournament. Ultimately Penn State would go 1-1 in the tournament, winning their first game against Texas A&M but losing to the Texas Longhorns in the round of 32.

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this story