Irish need to listen to conference call

Sporting News, The, Feb 7, 1994 by Gene Wojciechowski

Reduced now to moral victories (i.e., Notre Dame's near-upset of Duke last week at Cameron Indoor Stadium), the Irish faithful find themselves counting the days until spring football practice. What they should be doing is counting the nanoseconds until Athletic Director Dick Rosenthal and his staff consider the inevitable.

A conference.

Rosenthal says Notre Dame again hill assess the pros and cons regarding conference affiliation. The study, the third of its kind by the athletic department, will commence at season's end.

You can thank Coach John McLeod's team for the renewed interest in joining a league. With each new defeat, the Irish all but have forced the school's administration to reconsider its longtime status as a basketball independent.

At last look, the Irish were seen headed toward a 20-loss season, which isn't exactly what Rosenthal had in mind when he hired MacLeod three years ago. Worse yet, Notre Dame's schedule is as tough as beef jerky. Last week it was Duke. This week it's UCLA, then Georgia. Later the Irish face Marquette, DePaul, North Carolina and Louisville.

Killer games aside, the Irish also have managed to botch their so-called gimme games. Since upsetting then-No. 25 Missouri on January 12, the Irish have lost to Duquesne and St. Bonaventure on the road and Manhattan and Loyola at the Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center. In the loss to Loyola - the first time since 1956 the Irish have fallen to the Ramblers - Notre Dame scored 15 first-half points on 5-of-27 shooting. There would have been more booing by Irish fans, except they were too busy laughing.

MacLeod has to assume some of the blame. In three years' time, he and his staff have yet to attract a single recruit of national stature. As usual, Notre Dame didn't do much during the most recent early signing period. It came close on a few impact players but that's nothing new for MacLeod's staff.

The Irish desperately wanted Iowa prep star Raef LaFrentz, a 7-foot center whose name was on every blue-chip list in the country. Instead, LaFrentz signed with Kansas, later telling Chicago Sun-Times reporter Barry Cronin that he chose the powerful Jayhawks partly because of their Big Eight Conference ties. Of course, it also helped that Kansas actually wins games.

And have you kept track of 6-9 sophomore forward Jared Prickett of Kentucky? Notre Dame has. The Irish considered him a breakthrough player when they recruited him, and they were right. Unfortunately, he's breaking through for Coach Rick Pitino and the Southeastern Conference.

Which brings us back to one of Notre Dame's main basketball problems: a conference. The Irish need one.

The simple truth is that high-profile recruits crave winning and the perks that come with it. Barring one of the great turnarounds in the history of collegiate sports, the Irish will record their third losing season in four years. They will have made just one national appearance on NBC and another on ABC. They will be an NCAA Tournament no-show for a third consecutive time.

In short, they will have spent another season dying an independent's death.

Granted, there are quirks about Notre Dame that make it more difficult for MacLeod to enjoy immediate success. The Irish don't accept junior-college players, which is a traditional quick-fix solution for coaches. The school also features one of the more demanding academic admissions policies. The harder the standards, the harder it is to find quality players who can meet those classroom requirements.

But these policies have been at Notre Dame as long as the Grotto. Digger Phelps, stuck with those same restraints, used to be good for about 20 victories a season before the school and coach parted ways.

The most glaring obstacle to a Notre Dame basketball renaissance is the lack of a conference tie-in. By not belonging to a league, the Irish have to start from scheduling scratch each year. Now then, try finding 28 quality opponents willing to adjust their schedules to yours. It won't happen, which is why the Irish will play four ranked teams in nine days this month.

Although he won't come right out and say it, MacLeod wants Notre Dame in a basketball conference. He has seen how the Great Midwest Conference has helped revitalize programs such as DePaul, formerly a long-time independent.

And like Phelps before him, MacLeod has watched as the Irish's Northeast recruiting base has been decimated by the Big East Conference and the Atlantic-10 Conference. Gone are the days when Notre Dame could attract the best players from Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York.

How vital is the Northeast to the Irish? Put it this way: Four of the top five and six of the top 10 all-time Notre Dame scorers are from that region of the country.

This isn't to say that Notre Dame's woes can be solved by simply joining a league. Marquette, for example, began getting better players when, on occasion, the school's admissions department eased its entrance standards. At Cincinnati, Coach Bob Huggins has done a wonderful job of augmenting his roster with junior-college players.