'Season of Hell' Continues: Shrewsberry's Achilles Injury Caps Notre Dame Nightmare

Notre Dame basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry didn't want to discuss how he tore his achilles during Tuesday's 100-56 home loss to No. 1 Duke.

But he summed it up in perhaps the best way possible.

"It's like the season of hell continues," Shrewsberry said after entering the press conference room on crutches and sitting in a chair off to the side of the podium.

Shrewsberry's disastrous third season at Notre Dame hits low point

Micah Shrewsberry Notre Dame Basketball — Notre Dame Fighting Irish coach Micah Shrewsberry on the bench while wearing a boot against the Duke Blue Devils at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center. | Michael Caterina-Imagn Images

No one expected Notre Dame to be great in 2025-26, but there were legitimate reasons to believe it could improve from 13-20 and 15-18 records in Shrewsberry's first two seasons.

Junior guard Markus Burton returned as a preseason first-team All-ACC player and finished second in preseason ACC player of the year voting. Braeden Shrewsberry returned after averaging 14 points per game last season. And the 2025 recruiting class ranked 18th nationally by 247Sports, highlighted by four-star guard Jalen Haralson, the nation's 18th-ranked player.

Instead, at 12-16 overall and 3-12 in the ACC, the Irish are on pace for a similar or worse third season with Shrewsberry at the helm. Even in a bad year for the ACC, they're in 16th in place and may not even qualify for the conference tournament.

The Irish were without Burton and Haralson, their top two scorers, again on Tuesday, so there was little reason to believe they could be competitive against the nation's No. 1 team. But the outcome was about as bad as one could imagine, as Notre Dame suffered its worst home loss since 1898.

It was a 6-0 deficit in the blink of an eye, 20-4 within the first seven minutes, 54-22 at halftime, and it only continued to get worse. The Irish shot 36.5% from the field, 26.9% from 3-point range and 57.9% from the free throw line. They were outrebounded 49-27 and gave Duke 23 points off 14 turnovers.

That's what went wrong from a basketball standpoint, and Shrewsberry seemed to brace his team for even worse moving forward.

"The thing that I talked about for our guys is really –– I'm 49 years old. Tonight's not the worst thing that's ever happened to me," Shrewsberry said. "But these guys got a long life to live. And yeah, we wanted to play well, but we didn't, and they have a lot to do with it, right? There's a reason they're the No. 1 team in the country and one of the best defenses and offenses in the country."

"We didn't play as well as we wanted to, but this isn't gonna be the worst thing that ever happens in their lives. So embrace the next opportunity, embrace tomorrow, and if we just keep getting chances and opportunities, we're gonna keep fighting out way to see what happens."

Notre Dame has three games left against NC State, Stanford and Boston College to try to qualify for the ACC Tournament. That's perhaps the only goal left –– not that it'd make any significant difference in the program's direction at this point.