Penn State Basketball Rumors: Why Micah Shrewsberry Can't Leave for Notre Dame

With Notre Dame’s Mike Brey announcing his retirement at the end of the 2022-2023 season, rumors have already begun about his potential replacement. One name has been at the top of all of the lists: Penn State Basketball head coach Micah Shrewsberry.

Shrewsberry is from Indianapolis, having played high school ball at Cathedral High School and collegiately at Hanover College. His first coaching stops were at Wabash and DePauw, smaller schools in Indiana. More famously, Shrewsberry coached for Brad Stevens at Butler and Matt Painter at Purdue twice.

In fact, Shrewsberry’s only coaching stops outside of the state of Indiana were for the NBA’s Boston Celtics and here at Penn State.

Notre Dame is a storied program, which only six head coaches since 1951.

Brey has coached there since 200 and has a career .658 winning percentage. Notre Dame made the NCAA Tournament just last year, defeating the 11 seed Rutgers in 20T (play-in game) and #6 Alabama before falling to #3 Texas Tech.

Brey’s Fighting Irish made the NCAA tournament 13 times in his twenty years.

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Would Micah Shrewsberry really consider leaving Penn State Basketball after just two years?

Currently, the Nittany Lions are on the NCAA Tournament bubble, with Joe Lunardi having them as the ‘2nd team out’ but an easier back half of the conference schedule giving the Nittany Lions a strong chance to dance.

Normally, coaches do leave for ‘bigger and better things’ after success (as Pat Chambers was hired by PSU after making the NCAA Tournament twice with Butler, Ed DeChellis after making the NCAA Tournament with ETSU, etc.)

But two years is a REALLY short time.

It reeks of ‘career-ism’ and doesn’t speak well to any future recruits he may try to obtain. There’s not much of an argument that the Fighting Irish gig is a better one than Penn State, but both programs are dwarfed by football programs that ‘run the school’.

Notre Dame had a top 25 recruiting class this year, headlined by five star recruit JJ Starling and Brey had signed another top 30 class for 2023.

However, Shrewsberry has two back-to-back top 40 recruiting classes coming to the Nittany Lions, nothing to sneeze at in Happy Valley. And, oh by the way, one of those recruits is … HIS SON.

If the Notre Dame gig opened up two years from now, maybe after Shrewsberry took PSU to the NCAA Tournament twice, this move could make more sense. And, his son could follow in the transfer portal.

But just two years in, now is not the time for Micah Shrewsberry to make a move to Notre Dame.