Five things Micah Shrewsberry said before Notre Dame visits Miami

Notre Dame begins Atlantic Coast Conference play at noon ET on Saturday when the Irish travel to Coral Gables, Fla. to take on Miami. Here’s what Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry said to reporters Thursday afternoon in advance of the game against a 2023 Final Four team.

On the traits of a good ACC team and what Notre Dame needs to do to get there

“You start right away in transition, and Miami is one of the best teams in transition in the country. They really push the ball, really try and attack you after makes, after misses. If you continue to go through the league and look, like, I didn’t watch the game but I glanced up and saw it, I saw North Carolina’s halftime score [61-39 against Tennessee]. You see some of these scores, like, transition is really important. This is an offensive league, so your defense has to be really good. You got to force it into a half-court game, and that’s where we got to be good. That’s a major focus for us, especially starting with them.”

On the what needs to improve with Notre Dame’s 3-point defense against the Miami, who is No. 3 in the nation in 3-point percentage

“Just being there with high hands on the catch. Going back to numbers, and I got a numbers guy that does stuff for us, 3-point field goal percentage defense is really good when we contest. We contest about 75 percent of the 3-point attempts that people are taking. Our [opponent field-goal] percentages are, I want to say, 23 percent when we contest 3s. It goes up to 45 percent when we don’t contest 3s, which moves that to about 35 percent. That was before the South Carolina game, where they got some open 3s. Most of those were mistakes on our part. A couple guys over-helping, not being in the right spots and giving up 3s.

“I think our 3-point defense has been really good when we’ve contested, when we guard the right way. If you go back and look through the people that are making 3s against us, they’re guys that aren’t shooters. The big dude from Maryland Eastern Shore makes 4. Some big dude from Niagara that’s never made a 3 before in his life makes 2. We’re not closing out, we’re not contesting those shots. [South Carolina guard] Meechie Johnson‘s 4, 3 of them were our mistakes, so he should’ve only had 1.

“We got to be good at recognizing, taking them away. It’s not what they’re doing, it’s what we’re doing, and we gotta be locked in and focused on that. But these guys, they’re the best 3-point shooting team in the country. So you gotta that, like, our close-outs, our stick hand’s gotta be up, it’s gotta be in their face, in their air space, and then we gotta be ready to guard the drive.”

On Notre Dame sophomore center Kebba Njie’s health and performance in his two games back from a hand injury

“He’s still feeling his way back. He’s back, he’s 100 percent, but there’s always a little bit of doubt in your mind when you’re coming back from an injury. Especially a hand injury, where I’m catching the ball, I’m handling the ball, people are slapping at it. That’s how I got injured in the first place. Now, it’s getting comfortable with that. So the more game reps, that’s where he gets more comfortable. We still gotta use him. Still gotta play him. He knows it. He’s the first one to tell you, like, ‘I gotta play better.’

“He had more opportunities around the rim that he’s gotta finish. He’s gotta be more aggressive. He’s gotta play on balance, I think that’s where he — you know, some of the shots that he was getting and he was missing, he was flailing a little bit. I told him, ‘You look like freshman year Kebba,’ not the Kebba that’s been playing the last few weeks before he got hurt. It might take a little bit of time. It might take more reps of us giving him more live reps in practice as well to get him comfortable.”

On maintaining confidence against tough competition

“Nobody’s gonna be perfect, right? So we have to build off the things that we did right, and then correct the things that we didn’t do right. Shorten those mistakes. There’s gonna be mistakes in the game, but we can’t let one mistake turn into two, turn into three. That’s where, as a young team, really understanding what the value of possessions mean. Like, how important every possession is when you get into these games. They might not seem important, right? We start the second half with a stop and we lose it out of bounds. Now that turns into, we don’t kick it, but they call a kick, where they turned it over but they get the ball back. Now that turns into 2 fouls for two different guys and free throws for them, instead of us having the ball with a chance to go down and score when we should have.

“So, seeing that, recognizing it, but also showing them how how we’re playing and what we’re doing is gaining us possessions. Two different times, Kebba Njie dove on the floor, got a loose ball and got it back, and we got a possession. Carey Booth dove on the floor and got a loose ball, and then a jump ball and it’s our possession. Little things are really important in close-margin games. That’s what we’re gonna play. How we set up defensively, how we play, we’re gonna be in close-margin games if we play the right way. Every single possession matters.”

On needing 70-80 points to win most ACC games

“We gotta be better. Our details has to be better. The difference between scoring 53 and 70-something is the details of the game. South Carolina is a good defensive team, but we hurt ourselves. That’s what most of the film sessions that we’ve done so far leading into practice and what we’re gonna watch before practice is, we hurt ourselves. We’re not playing with great pace. We’re not screening people when we have an opportunity to screen people. So now, your catches become much tougher. Getting off of ball screens become much tougher. Catching the ball where you want it becomes much tougher. When you execute the details, things get a little bit easier. Things slow down a little bit. If we don’t do that, then yeah, we’re gonna score 53. If we do, then we’ll be able to score some points.

But, take one game out against Auburn — I thought we were a little bit shook against Auburn — we’re guarding people. You’re gonna have to get to 80-something, like, good luck to you. There ain’t been many people scoring 80-something on the teams I’ve been coaching the last few years, no matter how many points a game they average.”