Sweet 16 In Year 16 In ’16 For Mike Brey & Notre Dame

Throughout his 16-year head coaching career at Notre Dame, Mike Brey has often spoken about two subjects he believes in adamantly: building good karma and the law of averages.

Both have turned significantly in his favor the past two seasons, specifically in March.

Throughout the first 14 years of his Notre Dame tenure, Brey was to college basketball what Marty Schottenheimer was to the NFL from 1984-2006 — as good a regular season coach as there was in the business, but a 5-13 playoff record couldn’t quite elevate him into exalted Hall-of-Fame status. Schottenheimer didn’t even have a losing record until his 15th season (Brey had his lone one in year 14 at Notre Dame).

The current version is the Kansas City Chiefs’ Andy Reid — an outstanding regular season coach who can’t quite get over the hump in postseason action, where he is 11-11 (Brey is 11-10 at Notre Dame in NCAA Tournament contests).

As a coach in the Big East from 2000-13, Brey ranked among the Basketball Hall-of-Fame luminaries in the league’s esteemed history that began in 1979. His 146 league victories were fourth only to Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim (416), Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun (309) and Georgetown’s John Thompson (231).

Brey’s 2011, 2013 and 2015 Notre Dame teams were the last to hand respective national title winners UConn, Louisville and Duke a loss during the season (including 2-0 versus UConn, and 2-1 versus Duke) — but they don’t hang banners in Purcell Pavilion for such feats. Unfortunately, Brey’s stellar achievements always were followed by a “yeah, but …” as in:

‘Yeah … but those other top three Big East coaches won league titles and national championships.”

“Yeah … but while Brey was 136-84 in the regular season for a very good .618 winning percentage (think Major League Baseball and how .600 ball usually gets you into the playoffs), he was only 10-13 (.435) in the Big East Tournament and never reached the final.”

“Yeah, Mike Brey was Big East Coach of the Year three times (and National Coach of the Year once) … but he was also 6-9 in the NCAA Tournament.”

The two weeks of postseason tournaments were his albatross that usually overshadowed the previous 16 weeks of exceptional work. He was like the diligent, overachieving college student who in an advanced course posted a B+ or A- average through the first 16 weeks of the 17-week semester — and then, despite intense study, finished with a D in the heavily weighted final exam, thereby bringing down the overall grade.

And it wasn’t just about the first-round exits to No. 11 seeds Winthrop (2007) and Old Dominion (2010), or No. 10 seeds Xavier (2012) and Iowa State (2013), but also the second-round collapse to No. 10 seed Florida State (2011) when the Fighting Irish were No. 5 in the country.

Even more so, there were the repeated agonizing setbacks in which, like clockwork, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory:

• In 2001 second-round action, Notre Dame took a 55-54 lead in the closing minute against Ole Miss before the Rebels 5-5 Jason Harrison converted an unlikely three. Later, a 10-footer by future Irish pro Matt Carroll that could have tied the game was tipped.

• In the second round of the 2002 NCAA Tournament, Notre Dame led top-seeded Duke 71-64 with 6:24 left. A ferocious rally by the Blue Devils put them up 80-77 when in the final decisive series a missed three by Notre Dame and an Irish offensive foul call on the ensuing rebound resulted in the heartbreaking loss.

• In the opening round of the NCAA Tournament in 2007 versus Winthrop, the Irish rallied from a 54-34 deficit to take a 63-62 lead with 2:21 left — only to fall again.

• In first-round action in 2010, Notre Dame missed a pair of threes in the closing seconds of a stunning 51-50 loss to Old Dominion.

• Versus Xavier in the 2012 first round, Notre Dame led 48-38 before the Musketeers moved ahead 64-63 with 21.3 seconds left. Then at 65-63 with 2.8 seconds left, Notre Dame’s Eric Atkins converted his first free throw — but on the second an official controversially ruled that Irish guard Jerian Grant left his position behind the three-point line too early, thus giving the ball back to Xavier.

If there was a new gut-wrenching way to lose, Brey’s Notre Dame teams usually found them in the NCAA Tournament (even last year versus No. 1 and then-unbeaten Kentucky in the Elite Eight). The man seemed eternally cursed at tourney time — including squandering a 14-point halftime lead to Louisville in the semifinals of the 2011 Big East Tournament.

Yet over the last two seasons, karma and the law of averages have helped the Fighting Irish achieve a March mojo seldom seen in the program’s history:

• In 2015, Notre Dame won the ACC Tournament — one of the three greatest accomplishments in the program’s history since World War II (along with ending UCLA’s 88-game winning streak in 1974 and advancing to its lone Final Four in 1978).

• For only the third time since first accepting an NCAA Tournament bid in 1953, Notre Dame has won at least two games in the tournament in consecutive years. The others were 1953 (two wins) and 1954 (two), and then 1978 (three) and 1979 (two).

• For only the second time ever, Notre Dame has won five NCAA Tournament games in a two-year span, joining the 1978-79 units that were replete with future NBA stars such as Kelly Tripucka, Orlando Woolridge, Bill Laimbeer and Bill Hanzlik, among others. A victory over Wisconsin next Friday would set a new standard.

• After winning only six NCAA Tournament games his first 14 seasons at Notre Dame, Brey has won five in the last two. He is 4-1 the last two years in the ACC Tournament (two of the wins coming against Duke) and 5-1 in the NCAA Tournament, with the latter still in progress.

And in a 180-degree turn, Notre Dame routinely is now snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

Four times sine Feb. 6, it rallied from double-digit, second-half deficits (versus North Carolina, Louisville, Duke and Michigan) to win games.

In its last 12 overtime contests, the Irish are an amazing 11-1.

They eked out an overtime win in round two last year versus Butler when the game seemed lost, and survived and advanced in the closing seconds in the first round against Northeastern with a 69-65 win.

Against Stephen F. Austin on Sunday, was the tip-in by freshman Rex Pflueger with 1.5 seconds left a stroke of luck? Were the Irish fortunate to win 76-75 after trailing 75-70 with less than two minutes left? Maybe … but it sure helps even out some of the misfortunes in NCAA Tournament play since the turn of the century.

Good karma and the law of averages finally seem to have carried over for Brey and the Irish into postseason action. This year, the Irish were “supposed to” bow out again with a whimper after trailing Michigan 41-29 at halftime. They were “supposed to” play No. 3 seed West Virginia in the second round, but faced a No. 14 seed instead. They were “supposed to” play No. 2 seed Xavier next Friday, but will play instead a more eminently beatable No. 7-seeded Wisconsin team.

If Notre Dame ends up facing North Carolina in the Elite Eight, it will be rolled like it was in the ACC Tournament semifinals (78-47, Brey’s largest margin of defeat), right? Not necessarily. Last year the Irish lost by 30 at Duke — and then stunned the eventual national champion Blue Devils in the ACC Tournament. It also had won three straight over the Tar Heels prior to this month’s defeat.

Fearlessness, poise, resilience and top-of-the-line offensive efficiency have been annual hallmarks of Brey’s team, but often became overshadowed by postseason misery. Over the past two seasons now, though, Notre Dame joins Duke, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Gonzaga and Oklahoma as the lone schools to advance to the Sweet 16. Brey, who turns 57 on Tuesday — Happy Birthday, Sweet 16, with apologies to Neil Sedaka — has built a legacy that undoubtedly will place him in the school’s Ring of Honor down the line.

For years, we have been maintaining that Notre Dame men’s basketball — after an abysmal 1990s and then trying to find itself in the nation’s two toughest leagues, the Big East and ACC (six teams this year in the Sweet 16) — is extremely fortunate to have Brey guiding the once rudderless ship.

The last two years have served as a better testimonial mainly because of the postseason success. What an amazing fine line it was again between celebration with the victory over Stephen F. Austin, or how a missed tip-in with 1.5 seconds left would have led to more angst about postseason misfortune.

Positive karma and the law of averages have been at their peak under Brey.