Mens basketball advances to the Sweet Sixteen
By ANDREW SOUKUP
Sports Writer
INDIANAPOLIS
Mike Brey won't forget his 44th birthday anytime soon.
As the final seconds of the Irish's 68-60 win ticked off the clock Saturday, Brey pranced around on the sideline of the RCA Dome, swinging his fist through the air before giddily walking over to shake hands will Illinois coach Bill Self. The grin on his face was almost as big as Notre Dame's win over Illinois.
"Tonight, I was probably going to have a beer anyway," the birthday boy said Saturday. "Now I might have two."
Chances are pretty good Brey won't have to buy a drink in South Bend for a while, not after he took a team that spend most of the 1990s in the NIT to the Sweet Sixteen in just three years.
Back in June, back when the memory of a narrow second-round loss in the tourney to Duke was still fresh in the players' minds, the Irish made it their collective mission to advance to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1987. And when the season began, all the players could talk about was how they weren't satisfied with merely making the NCAA Tournament — they wanted to make some noise in it, too.
"I've been in this game, I lost this game two years in a row and it wasn't something I didn't want to have happen again," senior Matt Carroll said.
To do so Saturday, the Irish turned to Dan Miller, who played on a Final Four team at Maryland before transferring. With sharpshooter Matt Carroll plagued by a sore ankle, Miller scored a career-high 23 points, putting the Irish on a collision course with Arizona, the top seed in the West Regional.
When the regular season ended, however, the Irish looked like they were headed for an early exit in the Tournament. They had lost three of their last four games and left the Big East Tournament after a first-round loss against St. John's.
But as the Big East Tournament continued in New York, the Irish searched for the formula that enabled them to knock off three top-10 teams in one week in December. And they found it.
"That wasn't us, we're not that type of team. We didn't have our edge," Miller said. "We got our edge back, and we've got to make sure we keep that edge heading out to California."
Although it might not have had anything to do with the new hairstyles the players sported — the Irish shaved their heads two nights before a narrow first-round victory over Wisconsin-Milwaukee Thursday — Notre Dame played Saturday with an intensity that had been missing since March.
And when the final horn sounded and the Irish bounced around the court in celebration, a mission the Irish began back in June had finally been accomplished.
"I'm really happy that this group set a goal and achieved it," Brey said. "I think it's just another feather in our cap as a basketball program, and it says that we are back as a legitimate big-time basketball program."
All News Stories for Monday, March 24, 2003
