Mike Brey, the all-time winningest coach in Notre Dame men’s basketball history, has signed a contract extension that will keep him on the Irish sidelines as the Glenn and Stacey Murphy Head Men’s Basketball Coach through the 2024-25 season.
“Mike Brey has built one of the most consistently successful programs in the country,” University Vice President and James E. Rohr Director of Athletics Jack Swarbrick said. “And the foundation of that success is a winning culture that develops the members of his teams as both basketball players and young men. He is a perfect fit for Notre Dame and we are excited to have him lead our program well into the future.”
“My goal has always been to be good enough to retire as the head coach at Notre Dame,” Brey said. “It sure looks like I might be able to pull that off with this extension. I am truly honored and humbled to be the head coach at the University of Notre Dame. I want to sincerely thank Notre Dame president John Jenkins and Jack Swarbrick for their steadfast support and commitment to our program.
“I’m proud of what our program has achieved in the past 18 years and I could not be more excited about what the future holds.”
The new deal is effective on July 1, 2018, and will run through June 30, 2025. It extends his previous contract which was announced at the end of the 2011-12 season. That deal was set to expire in 2021-22.
Brey and his program have enjoyed the greatest run of sustained success in Notre Dame men’s basketball history over the past 12 seasons. Since 2006-07 the Irish have won 20 games 11 times, won nine NCAA tournament games, claimed the 2015 ACC Championship and made runs to the NCAA Elite Eight in 2015 and 2016.
Brey is the 13th-longest tenured coach in Division I and achieved three notable career milestones on the Irish sideline this season:
- On Jan. 3, 2018, he reached win number 394 at Notre Dame, surpassing Digger Phelps as the all-time winningest men’s basketball coach at the University.
- On Feb. 28, 2018, he won his 400th game at Notre Dame, becoming the 11th active coach to earn 400 wins at his current school.
- On March 6, 2018, he won his 500th career game with a victory over Pittsburgh in the ACC tournament, joining Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams, Greg Kampe, Tony Shaver, Tom Izzo, Fran Dunphy, Bob McKillop, Jay Wright and Mark Few as the only active coaches to win 500 or more games while coaching at just one or two schools.
A member of the BIG EAST Conference from 2001-2013, Notre Dame and Brey finished sixth on the all-time BIG EAST wins list with 285. The program’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2013-14 required just a year of adjustment before Brey established Notre Dame as one of the top four programs in the best college basketball conference in the nation.
Since joining the ACC, the Irish have won 118 overall games, 51 ACC games and eight ACC tournament contests — all numbers that place Notre Dame in the top four of the conference in those three statistical categories.
Should Brey finish out the length of the contract, he would spend 25 years on the Notre Dame bench. That would push him past Digger Phelps and George E. Keogan for longest tenure at Notre Dame (each were at Notre Dame for 20 years). Entering the 2018-19 season, only six active men’s basketball coaches have been at their current school for 25 years or more.
