said a few different times that when he heard the UNC job opened he thought that meant he'd be going to Kansas to replace Roy Williams? Is he really suggesting he would have turned down Kansas to remain at ND?

My Doherty story is after his intro press conference when he was taking additional questions from a group of reporters, I just stood in the circle listening and since it seemed like no one cared that I was there I decided I'd ask him a question. He asked if I was with the student newspaper and I said "no I'm just a student" and with kind of a strange intensity he replied "you're not JUST a student, we need your support". I certainly appreciated how much he wanted to pump life into the program but wasn't too surprized when word started to come out that he was a bit unhinged.

I worked in an investor center and took calls all day helping people with investments (first job out of college) It was purely random, but I took his call one time. Halfway through, I asked something like, "are you the basketball coach?" and he said yeah.

I remarked that I remember him at UNC and I did my free throws like he did...If you make the free throw, you keep your feet set and he laughed and said something like, "you've got to be the only basketball fan in the world that would remember that" I helped him with his investment stuff and then later he reaches out to me directly (he had taken down my name and #) for more assistance. As we wrapped up he asked if I was going up to the KU/Michigan State game (night game on a Saturday night) and I said I was planning on it. He tells me to swing by the basketball coaches tailgate "we'll have a number of recruits there and all of us basketball coaches will be there" Shoot, I get there and I felt like I was a prized recruit with him introducing me to Roy Williams and all the players (I had just graduated two years earlier)

Helluva nice guy...I still wonder what it was that held him back as I believe he should have been VERY successful as a head coach...maybe he was just meant to be an assistant.

I received three calls from one of his assistant coaches during the season. He wanted to know what channel the OSU game would be shown. He was letting local recruits know. He also called and asked me about several Central Ohio players and did I have any contacts. I offered to have him stay with us and have home-cooked meals but he never could arrange it. It was strange as that I had no direct connection to the basketball program so he may have just selected me out of the alumni list.

I can't remember which game it was, maybe the last of the regular season?

He had a lot of energy. At the time, sophomore me wrote him a letter trying to convince him to stay. I don't know that his tenure at ND would have had to match what happened at UNC. But I also am not privy to player info, and I trust that many of his players were unhappy at ND, as we have been told.

I am thankful, he left, however. I've since met Brey a couple of times in passing and he has been incredibly gracious. I don't think his recruiting has been fantastic, but I think he gets a lot out of his players. And he hasn't embarrased us. We could do a heck of a lot worse.

Does anyone recall what type of recruiting he was doing at ND? going after high ranking targets? Obviously, it was only one year but I just can't remember.

his tuteleage

He was like a firecracker. Light it, it burns instantly and then poof......... it burns out.

I am not sure he ever had the temperament to last long at any major job and be successful.

Would never work with today’s kids. Didn’t work back then either, as his record shows.

I watched his SMU team play one time and was immediately struck by the players body language. Clearly a disconnect. Also met him once and didn’t think he was particularly nice.

He was at ND about as long as was beneficial. His biggest positive was his energy. That energy injected some life into a program that had kind of fallen asleep under McLeod (this is not to blame McLeod - he had to navigate unique challenges bringing the program into the Big East). However, Doh had a manic personality and could fly off the rails in practice and be verbally (and from what I hear sometimes physically) abusive to players.

Although not physically abusive. Toward players and students. Fortunately, for some reason he liked me.

Not being able to win there in basketball is like not being able to win at ND in football. He just wasn't a good leader.

Chris Thomas was a McDonalds All-American, consensus top-25 recruit. Notre Dame's highest-ranked commitment since Phonz verballed in'87? Jordan Cornett was well-regarded. I believe Doherty was also credited for getting Ryan Humphrey to transfer from Oklahoma.

Essentially right before game number one, Doherty replaced Marty Ingelsby with Jimmy Dillon in the starting lineup. If I remember, he didn't tell Ingelsby or the team until the locker room before the first game.

I was a student at the time and I thought the decision was the right one for the team. Dillon was more athletic than Marty. Didn't score much but the team ran better with him on the floor. He averaged 6 assists.

But that's not the way smart coaches deliver that news to a player. And player communication was always an issue in Matt Doherty's career. When Brey got hired, I remember him flying to Ingelsby's home town to meet with him. He saw the error in Doherty's ways and realized he would need a Marty Ingelsby who was all in to have a tournament team in 2001. It was unsurprising to me to see Ingelsby on Brey's bench for so long, let alone how many other former players have been assistants. It's nice to see Ingelsby with a head coaching gig now.

Would Doherty have fit in at Notre Dame and done well? I think yes to point one, and maybe on point 2. His coaching career ended up being quite pedestrian, however.

Brey has been a solid coach for ND. I have issues with his substitution pattern at times; I think he caused guys like Burns to transfer when they deserved minutes. I grew up in CT watching Jim Calhoun and a defense first mentality, with teams having one great wing who could score (Allen, Hamilton, Marshall). The offense was so athletic that it took care of itself. And substitutions were a revolving door to keep pressure on. Calhoun was the opposite of Brey - he was a yeller and didn't mind screaming at kids. But one thing they have in common - both coaches had players who adored them.

Brey is more of an offensive coach. He is limited in getting athletes that UConn could always get. But Mike Brey has proven himself to be quite a solid offensive mind - one of the best. And if you look at shooting percentage stats of our opponents, they tend to be relatively low. He does well with what the type of guys we can get, which tend to me solid 3 stars rather than 4s and 5s.

And more importantly, guys study, he doesn't embarrass the school with his behavior and stands up for his players. Remember the Kyle McAlarney situation? He was appropriately suspended for driving while smoking a joint. But Brey never gave up on him and visited the family. Kyle came back and graduated, having a solid career in Europe.

Brey's been a good fit and has had success. I wonder if I'd be saying that if Doherty had stayed.

April 1st of 2020 was The Pit's 20-year anniversary.

My aging memory tells me that I found the Pit through an internet search during the interregnum between MacLeod and TDG. Found the Pub from there? Was the order reversed? Either way, the discovery was most fortunate.

NDHoops.com came online the day after Doherty's team beat Penn State in the NIT Semi-finals, March 29th, 2000.

NDHoops morphed into NDNation after the then-Rivals network collapsed. At the time, it was just adding a couple message boards to The Pit.

A 5 min porn clip. These kids nowadays have it so easy

I started on ndhoops and came over when you merged. Thought ndhoops started earlier as I came on when a student, but I thought it was around longer than that. That means I found ndhoops pretty soon after it started. Never knew that.

As Doherty said in the article, who leaves a basketball coaching job in June?

Along with Skip Prosser and Paul Hewitt, Brey was a finalist after Malloy nixed Majerus. Doherty was a late entrant, and he got the job.

Prosser (Wake Forest) and Hewitt (Georgia Tech) moved into ACC jobs that spring, so they weren't available. Brey was available, and he wasn't exactly the "settling" choice because he easily could have been chosen as MacLeod's replacement without much ND fan dissent. Then Brey built some equity by making a good impression at his introductory press conference.