Tag: Alex Wade

Notre Dame forward Matt Zona entering transfer portal

Another veteran is out the door.

The dust still was settling with Notre Dame guard Alex Wade entering the transfer portal when the Irish lost another veteran to that portal. This time, it was forward Matt Zona, who by far received the most playing time of any returning Irish player this past season. Zona, who has one year of eligibility remaining, made the following announcement on social media:

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Zona played every game for the Irish this past season and made six starts, averaging career highs of 2.3 points, 2.3 rebounds and 11.2 minutes a game. In four seasons with the Irish, he averaged 1.7 points and 1.8 rebounds over 76 games.

While Zona earned his minutes, he never was going to be ahead of the Irish’s younger players in the rotation. He was a veteran presence on a team that didn’t have much of that, so that’s how he played his part for the 2023-24 Irish. Here’s hoping he can close out his collegiate career with a bang somewhere.

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Notre Dame guard Alex Wade to enter transfer portal

It just didn’t work out for him athletically with the Irish.

Alex Wade was one of the few returning players for Notre Dame this past season. Despite this and receiving a scholarship, he still wasn’t able to crack the rotation. Having already received his degree from the university, he has decided to enter the transfer portal, which opened up earlier this week. Here’s his official announcement that he posted to social media:

IT’S BRACKET MADNESS: Enter USA TODAY’s NCAA tournament bracket contest for a chance at $1 million prize.

Wade’s Irish career consisted of 13 games over two seasons. He missed all five field-goal attempts and only cracked the scoring column with one free throw against Southern Indiana last season and two more in a loss to Marquette this past season. His last appearance came in the Irish’s blowout defeat March 5 at North Carolina.

It’s unfortunate that Wade’s basketball aspirations didn’t work out for the Irish, and he can’t be blamed for taking his talents elsewhere with all of that eligibility remaining. Hopefully, his next stop turns out a lot better athletically.

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Notre Dame returning only 1.57% of its 2022-23 scoring for 2023-24

How concerned are you about this?

We know Notre Dame is going to look completely different in 2023-24. The few returnees have made minimal impact on the program so far, and it’s one reason why Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports has picked the Irish to finish last in the ACC. Rothstein has indirectly taken that reasoning a step further by listing the percentage of returning scoring for each conference program. You’ll see that the Irish aren’t even in the same hemisphere of anyone else:

The only inaccuracy with this is that it actually goes up to 1.6% if you round it up to the nearest decimal, so for our purposes, we’re going with 1.57%. Nitpicking aside, if you take [autotag]Matt Zona[/autotag]’s 34 points and [autotag]Alex Wade[/autotag]’s single free throw and divide them by the 2,227 points the Irish scored during the season, the math checks out. [autotag]Tony Sanders Jr.[/autotag] was scoreless in five games, and [autotag]J.R. Konieczny[/autotag] didn’t play at all.

While none of this technically means anything for the upcoming season, it does illustrate how it might take even the most diehard Irish fans some time to get to know this new team. No one is projected to make a big splash right away either. Time for some of the new guys to prove those projections wrong.

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Look at Notre Dame’s current 2023-24 roster

Do you have confidence in this group as it stands?

There still is time for Notre Dame to add to its 2023-24 roster, but don’t count on a game-changer suddenly emerging onto campus. Barring an unforeseen circumstance, the players the Irish have now figure to make up the core. That’s not a strong vote of confidence for Irish fans, but remember that first-year coach [autotag]Micah Shrewsberry[/autotag] practically has to start from scratch after the program lost all of its rotation players to graduation and the transfer portal.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is going to be a very bad season for the Irish. The few holdovers from [autotag]Mike Brey[/autotag]’s tenure have played very little. While Shrewsberry was able to bring his 2023 Penn State recruiting class and one of his Nittany Lions starters from the 2022-23 season, that’s not a lot of college basketball experience coming in. He must be in one of, if not the least envious position in the country.

Hopefully, the day will come when Shrewsberry has built the Irish back into a winner. Until then, try and get behind these players who are just there to do their jobs and play basketball:

Notre Dame roster for 2021-22 season

Who will be hooping it up for the Irish this season?

It feels like college basketball remains far away, but Midnight Madness just happened, so it’s closer than you think. To that end, we should look at who makes up Notre Dame’s roster for the upcoming season. Many believe this is the team that can get the program out of the doldrums and back on track towards respectability. A major step in getting people to believe that would be the Irish’s first NCAA Tournament selection since 2017, which also was the last year they finished above .500 against ACC opponents.

This will be the 22nd iteration of the Irish with Mike Brey as coach. Despite having more wins than anyone in program history, he has two losing seasons in the past three and three losing conference records over the past four years. If he isn’t able to get this group to reach its full potential, questions about his future in South Bend certainly will arise. Here are the players who could determine where both Brey and the program headed going forward: