'If You Don't Play Hard, You'll Rot On The Bench. I'll Help You Transfer' - ND Coach Micah Shrewsberry Destroyed His Team After Losing By 20 To The Citadel
This is one of the more fiery press conferences if you want to call it that from Micah Shrewsberry I can remember. I don't blame him, you lose by 20 at home to Citadel and I'd be pissed too. Now, I get what he's saying here. Play hard or don't play and for players who don't play they tend to want to transfer. Fine by him because that means they aren't willing to work and he's trying to rebuild a Notre Dame team that is flat out awful. I mean he had to apologize to fans for last night
I personally have no problem with Shrewsberry saying this. Again, he's trying to rebuild Notre Dame. They weren't in a good spot when he took over and it's basically all young guys. They arguably have the worst roster of any power conference team, including Louisville, DePaul and Vanderbilt. And to be fair, he blamed himself.
[Source] - “It starts with me. Whatever’s going right now is not working. I’ve got to change my approach.”
But coaches can only do so much. They can only put in the gameplan, make the right subs, etc. Guys still have to play their asses off and quite frankly they have to make buckets. You score 45 against the Citadel at home? Woof. Yeah, I'd lose my mind too. Shrewsberry benched guys, he played walk-ons and he'll keep doing that if guys aren't going to play hard. That's how you start a rebuild.
I know Notre Dame is a football school, but they have always had a decent basketball program. Some of that was Mike Brey (and even back to Digger Phelps). But you can recruit there. Yeah, it's tougher with the academic standards but Notre Dame's recruiting base is all over the country. It's just about guys who play well and figure shit out. That's what they don't have right now. They are 4-7 with losses to Western Carolina, The Citadel and Georgetown.
I also know the transfer line will piss people off. But welcome to major sports. Again, he's not saying he's going to drive people out, he's saying if you don't work your ass off you're not playing. That obviously leads to transfers. I have no problem with a coach showing some emotion and trying to get his players to give a damn.