The 2017-18 Notre Dame Men’s Basketball Team tips off their second exhibition game Friday evening at 7PM Eastern. It will be the first opportunity for Irish fans unable to make it to the JACC to see the Irish play. The game will be streamed on ACC Extra, which is typically available on the ESPN streaming applications.

In preparation for one of the most hotly anticipated Irish basketball seasons in recent history, the 18 Stripes authors sat down and batted around a few burning questions. In this first post, we’ll tackle some off-season topics from around the world of college basketball. In the next, we’ll go deep on this Notre Dame roster. In the final installment, we’ll run through the schedule and what lies ahead for Mike Brey’s squad.

Around College Basketball

Our favorite game was in the news for all the wrong reasons this summer. What’s your biggest take away from the initial FBI announcements?

Joe: For me, it was the inclusion of the shoe companies. Ever since the early Sonny Vaccaro days, the game has had a murky presence. USA Basketball, the NCAA and NBA all abdicated developmental responsibility for talent at the youth and high school level. The shoe companies stepped into that void and ran grass-roots basketball. When the FBI demonstrated that the shoe companies were funneling bribes to players via assistant coaches, stuff got real fast. With coaches technically being state employees, you now have publicly traded companies making illegal bribes via state officials. Not good.

Eric: I was initially very surprised the FBI was involved, but after reading everything, it made sense why they were investigating. I don’t think the NCAA will be happy to hear their findings, and there was zero chance the status-quo would change without a non-NCAA body getting involved. For now, I expect many ADs and university presidents to take a long look at their basketball coaches and potentially make changes to avoid finding their schools in headlines next to the phrase “under investigation by the FBI.”

Dan: Like Eric. my biggest take away from the news is that college hoops’ worst kept secret was finally no longer a secret. It was initially shocking to see FBI Involvement, but given the gutlessness of the NCAA to do anything about major institutions making up decades of fake majors and providing prostitutes to recruits in just the last year or two, the only way under the table payments like this were going to get exposed was via an outside legal body.

Alstein: My biggest takeaway is how everyone got to feel all righteous putting easy whipping boy Rick Pitino on blast for a fun week before forgetting or ignoring the other allegations and arrests made. Pitino is so loathsome, so it’s a total lay-up to go all-in against him. Way to go, media. But much of the college hoops media were tripping all over themselves defending Sean Miller, whose top assistant has been arrested, and at least two of his current players and one of his (now former) commits are alleged to have been paid illegally. If we all weren’t completely insane in thinking the head coaches have no idea what’s going on in their very, very small organizations, Miller would have been fired weeks ago. It’s ridiculous.

Simon (4PS): Above all I think that the FBI involvement and federal prosecution further revealed how much of a sham the NCAA is. We all love to yell at the NCAA and its hypocrisy but having the Feds step in on a set of issues so comparatively minor (when compared to large scale white collar crime that you normally see the FBI involved in that is) and have to use their time and resources to do this because the so-called governing body was so willing to turn a blind eye is a new – albeit known – low.

To borrow a political phrase, how would you “drain the swamp” in regards to college basketball recruiting?

Joe: I was thrilled to see Adam Silver speak out about the 1-and-done rule. For me, the NBA has farmed out responsibility for scouting and sifting through young talent. The artificial age limit on the talent market led to a lot of kids that had no interest in an education being in school. Opening up the G-League and paying NBA contracts to the 1% of 1% of players immediately changes the ecosystem in a very healthy way. If you’re really afraid of kids busting out without an education, put in the CBA that the signing club needs to put $100k or $250k in a college savings account for every 18 year old they sign. The flip side is that I’d also require that every NCAA school be required to offer a 4 year scholarship to every athlete that signs with them. The year-to-year thing is an unfair imbalance. Having full 4-year deal emphasizes that the schools really want to educate their players.

Eric: I like the baseball/hockey model, but those don’t work without the NBA cooperating. For those unfamiliar, players are eligible to be drafted out of high school, but if players choose to go to school, they have to stay for three years. It sounds like Silver is open to that, but he’d need buy in from owners and the NBAPA as well as expanding the G-League and increasing salaries. The odds of all that happening seem pretty low.

Dan: Given that I love college basketball, I’d love to avoid saying “burn it all down,” but I definitely think it’s in the realm of reasonable outcomes if the FBI manages to find a large percentage of schools and players are involved in things like this. This answer really depends on how many kids in a given year were getting paid and what percentage of those were getting paid over and above what a starting G-League salary is. If Joe is correct, that this is a 0.01% issue and at most, 10-15 guys were getting paid per year, then opening the G-League to the 18 year olds probably works. On the other hand, we know that at least six power conference schools are involved and there’s reason to believe more are coming. If that number hits 30 and you’re looking at half of any given year’s March Madness bracket being implicated, wholesale changes will be needed, up to and including the shuttering of whole programs.

Alstein: Not sure I really have much to add here. A real NBA minor league should help. But at the college/NCAA level, I don’t think a whole lot changes. I bet no other head coach will even get fired. The NCAA will leave all offending schools unpunished. There will still be a race to the bottom of assistant behavior to pull recruits and keep their jobs. And everyone can likely be assured that the FBI isn’t going to go after college hoops again (what a one-in-a-million thing to happen in the first place).

Simon (4PS): Adam Silver – the best commissioner in professional sports (though that doesn’t seem to be that high a bar these days) – recently made some unequivocally critical statements about how the one-and-done rule has not been a complete boon for all involved and both the NY Times and Y! Sports have him on record stating his willingness to change the rule moving forward. That would HAVE to involve what’s been discussed by the other guys – namely a real minor league, and I think the current efforts to improve and re-brand the G-League is a good start.

What’s the ND spin on this whole thing?

Joe: It is taking every fiber of my being not to jump up and down and wag my finger at every Pitino-like figure out there. My preference at this point is to trust Brey and his assertion that ND operates in a very clean way. My impression is that we’re really only talking about top 10-15 guys in every class, and Brey shops in an entirely different aisle. This really comes down to guys who never wanted to be in school anyway, and ND doesn’t really appeal to that type of recruit that has the dollars attached to them. I guess the ND spin is that Brey has built a competitive program in an environment where he doesn’t get those kinds of advantages/recruits.

Eric: Brey was voted the second “cleanest” coach by his peers over the summer. I think we’ve got nothing to worry about, and will be free to laugh at the likes of Louisville, Miami, and co.

Dan: Embrace it, Joe! If any of this connects to Notre Dame, it will be the fact that we were recruiting someone who eventually did get paid and we didn’t land him, nothing more. It’s time to kick back, put our feet up and enjoy the warmth of the fire burning in the pile of rubble that is the Louisville program.

Alstein: I think ND gets a 1-2 year window to really strike on the recruiting trail when most everyone plays it safe while the dust settles. The 2018 class is great, although it likely would have been the same anyway. 2019 has got to be the year to pull in a major, major prospect if it’s ever going to happen.

Simon (4PS): Exactly what Alstein said – this is a great opportunity to strike while the iron is hot, though I must admit I’m a touch nervous about how abruptly we dropped Simi Shittu on the recruiting trail, on the other hand, perhaps it’s a clear signal that we do operate on a “cleaner” level.

The Recruiting Trail

This was quite an off-season for Notre Dame on the recruiting trail. What’s your biggest takeaway?

Joe: Depth. After a very thin class coming in this year and a little unplanned attrition, Brey needed depth and he delivered. It almost feels like he’s shopping in another aisle these days. Being the Loosest Coach in America and having great success in the country’s best league has its benefits.

Eric: That Brey was able to bring in an entire starting 5 of Top-100 recruits (counting Durham). A future starting lineup of Hubb, Carmody, Goodwin, Laz, and Durham is really enticing. Getting them all in one class is new territory for ND hoops.

Alstein: Holy moly, what a great class. The depth is certainly great and sets up the roster nicely, but there are multiple potential stars in this class. Hubb is at the top of my list, but you can certainly envision Durham and Laz turning into key starters on a future ACC Champion as well. But Prentiss Hubb, man. That’s the guy. I’m wildly biased towards lefty shooters, but his combination of competitiveness, length, athleticism, court vision – I’m telling you, that’s a future star at the national level.

Simon (4PS): Obviously the recent news about Hubb’s ACL surgery is not welcome, but he’s young, medical technology is way advanced, he’ll have a year to get back, and there’s a chance that we may be able to give him a RS year to recuperate further, so even if it’s a blow for now, I’m not too worried about him living up to his promise in a year or two. I love Laz, we’ve been looking for that perfect stretch big to play in Coach Brey’s system and I have a feeling we found our man.

Paddy: I’m incredibly impressed overall with the job that Brey and his staff have done. DJ Harvey was a big get for the staff last year, but settling for a one-man class left them a lot of work to do this year. Man, did they come through. Prentiss Hubb looked like an instant contributor at the open scrimmage before the Georgia game. Nate Laszewski is our most exciting stretch big prospect in quite some time, and Dane Goodwin and Robbie Carmody seem like do-it-all contributors that will push for playing time rather quickly. All this, of course, is without mentioning Juwan Durham, who will have a year of getting acclimated to Notre Dame under his belt. This influx of talent should have every Irish fan excited.