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Notre Dame's Brey recounts journey to South Bend

By Nate Mink
Special to NCAA.org

HOUSTON — Mike Brey was “unplugged” from another long college basketball season on the Delaware bench, relaxing on the porch of his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., sipping a cup of coffee, browsing the pages of USA Today.

It was on that July 2000 morning he read Roy Williams turned down an offer to become the head basketball coach at North Carolina. In his mind, already, were the workings of a domino effect: Matt Doherty, who one year earlier had beaten Brey out for the Notre Dame job, was headed to Chapel Hill.

Brey turned to his wife Tish and told her they may need to start thinking about life in South Bend again.

“That was a Friday,” the Notre Dame coach said shortly after being named The Associated Press coach of the year for the first time in his 15-year career. “The next Friday we were on a plane for a press conference out there.”

A strong returning Delaware squad that lost to the Jay Wright-coached Hofstra team led by Speedy Claxton in the America East tournament eased the initial disappointment of being passed up for the Notre Dame job.

“I walked out of that building at Hofstra, got on the bus,” Brey said. “I knew we were going to the NIT. But I thought, ‘I don’t think I’m gonna be back. I think my work’s done here.’”

Later that summer, he was on a plane to South Bend.

He returned Notre Dame to relevance in the Big East this season with a 14-4 conference record, tying a school record. A 27-7 record earned the Fighting Irish a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, where it lost to Florida State in the third round.

Brey secured the job he wanted and now has the Irish pointed toward heights the program has not seen since the late ’70s.

“My style fits that style and we got some momentum in our program now,” Brey said. “And we dream about doing more and we go back to the drawing board and, ‘OK, how do…we get farther than the second round or the Sweet 16?’”

Nate Mink is a senior in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State University