Mike Brey Returning to Notre Dame for 2021-22 After Missing NCAA Tournament

Notre Dame missed out on the NCAA tournament after an 11-15 season, but head coach Mike Brey intends to lead the team in an effort to return in 2022.

Jeff Goodman of Stadium reported that Brey said "he will 100 percent be back in South Bend next season." 

Brey has coached at Notre Dame since 2000, when he led the team to a regular-season Big East championship and the NCAA tournament in his first year after arriving from Delaware, where he had coached for five seasons. 

Through 21 seasons with the Fighting Irish, he has led the team to a 448-248 record and 12 tournament appearances, though the group has missed the Big Dance for each of the last four seasons. The team has not been ranked in the AP Top 25 since 2017-18, when they went as high as five, per Basketball Reference. 

"I told them, 'A year from this Selection Sunday, our goal should be to see our name flash up.' That's the crossroads we're at, absolutely," Brey said Saturday, via Mike Berardino of Forbes. 

Things are expected to look up for Notre Dame next season, when co-captains Prentiss Hubb and Cormac Ryan will join forces with Paul Atkinson, a graduate transfer from Yale who was named the Ivy League Player of the Year last season.