Those first few hours, those first few days, they weren’t the easiest admitted Notre Dame basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry.
Flying back from a week-long West Coast road trip Saturday was hard. Being home for the first time in eight days was hard. Returning to his Rolfs Hall office Monday morning, hard. Just existing. Hard.
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There is regret. There is disappointment. There is embarrassment, none of which is going away anytime soon and all of it stemming from the Irish head coach’s behavior at the end of the Friday, January 2 game against California when he rushed toward an official following his team’s 72-71 loss.
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Shrewsberry had to be restrained by assistant coach Mike Farrelly and shielded by Irish power forwards Matthew MacLellan and Tommy Ahneman, who prevented the head coach from confronting Adam Flore over his and-one foul call on Irish guard Logan Imes. The foul led to a four-point play by Cal guard Dai Dai Ames and the first Irish loss in Atlantic Coast Conference play.
On Monday, during his 10-minute window on the ACC Coaches Zoom call, where he appeared last among the 18 league’s coaches during the three-hour and 20-minute session, Shrewsberry spoke for the first time of the post-game incident.
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He was more apologetic than apoplectic over seeing his team have a league road win snatched away by a questionable call in the closing seconds.
“We all make mistakes; I made a huge mistake,” Shrewsberry said. “Now it’s about learning from it and growing from it.”
Grow from it by leaning on a crush of texts and phone calls and conversations that have helped Shrewsberry work through one of the tougher moments of his coaching career.
“When you’re going through stuff, you have people you can rely on,” he said. “I appreciate every single person that reached out to me and tried to help me. That’s what we all need.”
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What has he needed? Where do you start?
“A lot of self-reflection, a lot of talking with people within our program, within our university, a lot of people I rely on and count on as mentors,” Shrewsberry said. “How do you handle situations better? What happens the next time and how do we handle those?
“That’s been a huge part of the last two days. It’s been a tough two days.”
Late Saturday morning, before the Notre Dame traveling party flew back from Northern California, Shrewsberry issued a public apology for his actions. The conference also issued a public reprimand of Shrewsberry, in his third season at Notre Dame. It would have no further public comment, the league said, and considered the matter closed.
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Gone, maybe, but not forgotten.
“It’s something that’s not going away,” Shrewsberry said. “I apologized after the game and I’m still doing that right now. It’s something that I have to move on from.”
Shrewsberry appeared on Zoom after the Irish had finished practice Monday in Purcell Pavilion. Notre Dame (10-5 overall; 1-1 ACC) is off most of the week from game action before its conference home opener Saturday, January 10 against Clemson (12-3; 2-0).
“You get a couple of these a year in conference play, where you get a chance to really focus on ourselves,” Shrewsberry said. “We have to take advantage of it.”
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And keep moving forward. The Irish and their head coach.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry has plenty of time to reflect
