Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/400621
MEN'S BASKETBALL year's 15-17 record and the integration of several new players in 2014-15, that experience could not have come at a better time. "It's a nice chip on our shoulder for all of us to come back and come off the mat," Brey said. "We've been put in that situation before in my tenure. We kind of started to develop our own identity. Because of the foreign tour, we have a better idea for who we are. We have a lot of pieces. One of the things that encouraged me the whole offseason was [senior guard Jerian] Grant and [senior swingman Pat] Con- naughton are two of the best, maybe two of the 10 best or 12 best return- ing players in the ACC. That's a great place to start." The ACC preseason media poll will not be conducted until the confer- ence's media days in late October, but the Irish are a likely bet to receive a double-digit projection after last sea- son's 6-12 league mark. Most of the time, that's where Brey's teams have done most of their damage during his tenure. "We look and we say, 'Let's fight back into the mix of an NCAA bid,'" he said. "The one thing we've created around here, which I'm proud of, is when we don't get an NCAA bid we're really disappointed. I love that that's kind of what we've created. That's never really changed for us. The one thing I told them in the locker room af- ter the last game in Italy, 'Fellas, we're going to be picked around nine, 10, 11 in this league.' … We've come from the double-digit hole many times to snatch a bid. It's not unfamiliar ter-