Hoop Practice Opens

The Notre Dame basketball team opened practice today in a new arena (and boy is it nice), a different lineup, and nowhere near the hype that followed the program before last season.

On the outside, expectations are tempered this time around. With the return of star forward Luke Harangody, the Irish will likely be around the top 25 bubble this preseason and picked to finish about eighth or ninth in the Big East when the coaches vote next week during media day.

“It’s a little bit of a chip on your shoulder,” Irish head coach Mike Brey said of the mood of his team. “That’s the atmosphere they enter the thing in.”

The underdog tag has always suited this program well under Brey, who enters his tenth season as Notre Dame coach. And after falling well short of hopes last season, that profile is firmly back in place as it was in 2006-07 and 2007-08 when Brey earned Big East Coach of the Year honors in consecutive seasons when the Irish surprised and totaled 25 league wins.

“We could be picked anywhere from ninth to 13th,” Harangody said. “But that’s okay with us. I think back to my freshman year [2006-07] when we were picked 11th and we finished fourth in the league.”

Notre Dame will have a new look but it still features a nice foundation with Harangody and senior point guard Tory Jackson, both of which were named tri senior captains this season along with guard Jonathan Peoples.

Harangody and Jackson are both four-year starters for the Irish. Senior guard Ben Hansbrough appeared in 65 games with 37 starts in his two seasons with Mississippi State before transferring to Notre Dame.

Junior power forward Tyrone Nash appeared in 34 games last year and saw his minutes and production climb as the season moved along. Peoples has always been a spot player but he played in all 36 games last season and he has 95 career appearances.

“We’re still kind of old,” Brey said. “We have some experience and any time you’re old in college basketball, and anytime you’re old in the league we signed up to play in, you always have a shot.”

Expect the starting lineup to include Harangody, Jackson, Nash and Hansbrough for sure.

And that brings us to the great unknowns within the team – and perhaps the two most needed pieces entering the season – in Scott and Abromaitis, one of which will be the fifth starter. Neither even average five minutes a game in their careers but they have spent three years in the system. And with the loss of Purdue transfer Scott Martin, both juniors will get their chance to fill a void in both scoring and rebounding.

“When we’re asking these guys to deliver for us, we’re not asking them to do it as 18-year-olds who have only been on campus for a couple of months,” Brey said. “I really feel they are ready to do that. They have paid their dues. They’ve been patient. They’ve been frustrated at times as young guys are in our program, because many of them have had to wait for their turn to get in there.”

Peoples will round out the eight-man rotation, with maybe one of the four freshmen earning some spot minutes.

Life Without Martin

The Irish were dealt a significant setback earlier this month when junior transfer Scott Martin was lost for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee.

Martin would have been in the starting lineup to start the season and was expected to bring both a variety of scoring options and some much-needed rebounding help to the Irish.

Martin said he was devastated when he got the news that surgery would cost him a second straight full season, after missing last year because of transfer rules when he came from Purdue. But his head has cleared and he plans to apply for what would be a sixth year and use all three seasons of his eligibility at Notre Dame, beginning with the 2010-11 season.

“You just have to find the positive in it,” said Martin, who expects to be full go by next summer. “Just take the good out of it. It’s just another year to get stronger and I’ll just come back even more hungry.”