Notre Dame NCAA Tournament Hero Inks Pro Deal

Notre Dame NCAA Tournament hero Rex Pflueger has signed a pro basketball deal.

Rex Pflueger, Notre Dame’s all-time leader in games played for the basketball team, has inked a professional deal with the Newcastle Eagles of England.  Newcastle plays in the BBC, the British Basketball League.

Pflueger chose Newcastle in part, due to his late mother who was English by birth.

Pflueger said in the team’s official release:

“It feels great knowing that I will be starting my professional career in a country that I am very much familiar with”, he said.

“My mother was born and raised in Andover before eventually meeting my father in the US and moving out here full time.”

Notre Dame fans remember Pflueger for being a leader, leaving his heart on the floor nightly and for battling back from a knee injury.

Pflueger’s tip-in with under two seconds remaining against Stephen F. Austin in the Second Round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament helped send Notre Dame to the Sweet 16 and eventually the Elite 8 for the second year in a row.

Notre Dame Basketball Earns NABC Academic Honors For Fourth-Straight Season

Notre Dame is a hard place to be a student. Even harder to be a student-athlete. Yet the basketball team won another national academic honor

It’s no secret that being a student-athlete at Notre Dame isn’t the easiest thing.  It’s also no secret that despite the incredibly demanding workload and balance required, that Notre Dame’s athletic teams continuously impress in the class room on a national level.

That was again the case with the Notre Dame basketball team as this week they earned their fourth straight NABC Academic Honor.

From the University:

NOTRE DAME, Indiana (July 15, 2020) — The University of Notre Dame men’s basketball team has earned a Team Academic Excellence Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) for the fourth consecutive year. The award requires a team to compile a minimum combined GPA of 3.0 for the 2019-20 season. 

For the 2019-20 spring semester, the Irish boasted a 3.555 grade point average and a 3.338 average for the entire season. Each of Notre Dame’s 11 players earned a grade point average above 3.0 during the most recent school academic calendar year. In addition, the Irish conferred four undergraduate degrees (exiting seniors John Mooney and T.J. Gibbs along with rising fifth-year seniors Juwan Durham and Nikola Djogo) and a one-year Master’s of Business Administration degree for exiting fifth-year senior Rex Pflueger. 

The Irish join Villanova, Seton Hall and Stanford as the only power conference men’s basketball teams to earn NABC Team Academic Excellence Awards in each of the last four seasons.

Congratulations to all involved on this remarkable honor.