Throughout his tenure at Notre Dame, Mike Brey has been has been notorious for his short benches and lack of depth, even Brey's best teams only ran seven or eight man rotations. But with the abundance of depth and emergence of the transfer portal, we could see Brey shift his way of thinking a bit.
Throughout the years, Brey hasn't used all of his scholarships so that his current guys wouldn't hop in the portal due to a lack of a path to playing time. The 21st year head coach has kept his groups small so every scholarship player had a clear path to playing time. Going with a shorter rotation obviously also gives starters the most game action as possible, which gives them more freedom to play fast without being concerned about being yanked.
All of that sounds great but over the past two or three years Brey's roster building has, at times, backfired. In multiple instances over each of the last few seasons, Notre Dame's stars have run out of gas late in the game when Brey needed them most. The lack of depth also hindered the Irish defensively, if only seven guys are playing and know they won't be taken out anytime soon, they tend to take possessions off because they're tired or want to preserve themselves for the second half. Brey even admitted to dropping into more zone early in the season to "save their legs". With the depth the Irish have they could end up throwing waves of fresh legs at teams rather than having guys take possessions off to preserve themselves.
Brey clearly won't ever be Leonard Hamilton in this aspect, but in his talk with Dick Vitale the 62 year old coach, said of Blake Wesley and JR Konieczny “Both of them will be in the rotation this year" Assuming Brey meant what he said, the rotation would already include eight members (Hubb, Ryan, Wertz, Goodwin, Laszewski, Atkinson, Wesley, Konieczny) and is still in need of another big man. Adding a third big man puts the rotation at nine guys with talented players at multiple positions still without roles.
The Irish have already reaped the benefits of a deeper roster through their summer program. In his meeting with the media, Brey said that there is some "nice pressure" on Notre Dame's veteran guards that they didn't have in past years. The Irish were also able to more smoothly run practice just because of the number of players they had, in past offseasons being without a guy like Robby Carmody for the summer would've made things hard from a numbers standpoint. Now that Brey has built a deeper roster they are no longer reliant on Carmody being ready to go which benefits both sides.
This year's group is shaping up to be one of Brey's deepest throughout his tenure at Notre Dame and to take full advantage of it, the 21st year head coach may have to play more guys than he is accustomed to. The rotation size will undoubtedly be one of the biggest storylines heading into a make or break year for Brey and his team. With the abundance of the transfer portal and struggles Notre Dame has had with depth in the past it wouldn't be shocking if the Irish continue to build deeper rosters in the future. This year is a nice test run in that aspect and could contribute to a big change in the future if all goes well (assuming Brey remains the head coach).
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