Notre Dame walked into the preseason with a clear hole to fill after Marcus Burton’s departure, and Brady Koehler is already making a strong case that the Irish may have found their new engine.
The sophomore forward was everywhere in Notre Dame’s final tune-up before the trip to Rome for the November 1 opener against Villanova, playing 29 minutes and stuffing the stat sheet in a 19-point outing against DePaul. He also finished with 5 assists, 4 rebounds, and a 50% mark from deep, going 3-for-6 from three-point range.
“I thought BK was big-time,” Notre Dame basketball head coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “When he plays like that, we’re a totally different team.”
That’s the kind of performance Notre Dame has been waiting to see. With Burton gone after serving as the Fighting Irish’s focal point in South Bend, Koehler is stepping into a bigger role that goes beyond scoring. The sophomore is being asked to help steer the group in the locker room and away from the court, too.
Koehler said the response around him only pushes him further.
“I think it’s just super motivating,” Koehler said. “In the locker room, they were talking about that same stuff.
And it’s just like, knowing my whole team has a super-high standard for me, that makes me want to go harder. And I mean, felt like I did that tonight.”
Shrewsberry is also looking for another piece to stabilize things, and that’s where Braeden Smith enters the picture. The hope is that Koehler can anchor the front court while Smith becomes the lead option in the backcourt, giving Notre Dame a true one-two punch.
Smith arrives as a veteran college guard in his final year of eligibility and his third school in five seasons. He began at Colgate, transferred to Gonzaga, and played 31 games there with 17 starts before landing at Notre Dame. Against DePaul, he matched Koehler with 17 points, added 5 rebounds, and knocked down 3 of 6 shots from beyond the arc.
The numbers from last year don’t tell the whole story for either player. Koehler and Smith both averaged a little over 5 points per game as part-time starters, but both are moving into full-time roles now. If Friday night looked more like the blueprint than last winter did, Notre Dame may have more scoring punch than people expect in Shrewsberry’s fourth season.
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For a defense that is trying to find its footing under a new coordinator, the concern is not just what happened in one game but how quickly the next test arrives. Notre Dame now has to tighten things up before facing Navy and Miami, two opponents that can force a defense to handle different looks and stay disciplined snap after snap. If the Irish cannot show more flexibility and disruption soon, the questions around this unit are only going to get louder. [Read more 🡒]