Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/705594
MEN'S BASKETBALL BY MATT JONES N ow more than ever, Mike Brey's coaching staff is filled with names that should be fa- miliar to fans of Notre Dame. After two of Brey's former assis- tants — Martin Ingelsby (head coach at Delaware) and Anthony Solomon (assistant at Georgetown) — left this offseason, Brey turned to former Irish players Ryan Ayers and Ryan Hum- phrey to fill the vacancies. "We are going back to the well of former players, 'getting the band back together' so to speak," Brey said in a Notre Dame release. The former Notre Dame players — Humphrey played with the Irish from 2000-02 before going in the first round of the NBA Draft, while Ayers competed for the program from 2005- 09 — join Rod Balanis, who has been with Brey since he was named Notre Dame's coach in July 2000, on the three-man staff. But Brey's connection to his former players does not end there. Brey's two non-recruiting assis- tants are also former Irish players. His longtime director of basketball operations is Harold Swanagan, a forward at Notre Dame from 1998- 2002, and newly named video coor- dinator Eric Atkins is a 2014 Notre Dame graduate, three-time Irish cap- tain and was a third team All-ACC selection in his final campaign. A former assistant under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, Brey has fol- lowed Coach K's habit of hiring ex- players as coaches. Ingelsby, who was Brey's first point guard at Notre Dame, took with him Pat Rogers, the former Irish video coordinator who Atkins replaces. Humphrey, who served as the director of player development at Northwestern since November 2014, was the first to be hired. Then Brey brought on Ayers — the son of Randy Ayers, who served as Ohio State head coach from 1989-97 and has held several assistant coaching stints in the NBA — who has been an assistant at Bucknell since November 2014. Humphrey was named a captain as a fifth-year senior in 2001-02, and averaged 18.9 points, 10.9 rebounds and 2.8 blocks per game that season. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME MEDIA RELATIONS