Sinking Feeling : New Notre Dame Basketball Coach Burdened by Nightmarish Schedule

One can only wonder what goes through Notre Dame Coach John MacLeod’s mind as he swims lap after lap, 1,000 long yards in all, during his daily in-season dips. He calls them his “stress pills,” and by the look of the Irish’s 1-5 record, MacLeod might want to increase the dosage.

There in the solitude of the school’s indoor pool, MacLeod splashes methodically through the water, a new thought about his struggling Notre Dame team born with each stroke.

As his arms churn, so must his stomach. After all, the young season, his first at Notre Dame after an 18-year career as an NBA coach, has not been kind to MacLeod. Hired to rebuild a program that had begun to falter under the familiar--some say, uninspired--direction of Digger Phelps, MacLeod finds himself faced with a growing collection of concerns. Among the most common:

--Will the Irish win another game this season and is it too late to junk Notre Dame’s masochistic schedule and instead, revive that wonderful Athletes in Action rivalry?

--How many points will Harold Miner, whose USC team plays Notre Dame tonight at the Sports Arena, score against the Irish? And is it true that Miner nearly accepted a Notre Dame scholarship three years ago?

--And how long will it take until the Irish’s bungee cord plunge to basketball hell bottoms out, allowing the program to snap back to respectability, to say nothing of the NCAA tournament?

“We’re making progress,” MacLeod said. “It’s not seen in the won-loss column, but we’re making progress.”

MacLeod had hoped the turnaround would begin as early as this season, but it is now obvious that he was a victim of wishful thinking. A postseason appearance? Not likely. The Irish are headed for their second consecutive season of March quiet, not madness.

How this happened, nobody knows for sure. The most popular theory involves Phelps, who was here 20 years, averaged nearly 20 victories and watched all 54 of his four-year players earn degrees before (take your pick) he resigned/was forced out last April.

The theory was simple enough: Blame absolutely everything on Phelps. Recruiting failures, NCAA tournament losses, ghastly looking uniforms, a 12-20 record last season. . . . When in doubt, blame it on Digger. And so they did, some with more zest than others.

Despite a certain knee-jerk beauty to the accusations, Phelps deserved better. That might explain why MacLeod, shortly after accepting the Notre Dame job, visited with his friend Phelps for nearly three hours one evening.

“We had a good talk,” MacLeod said. “I’ll tell you what, he did a very, very good job here. What I’d like to do is get back what he had going here six or seven years ago. We were packing them in here and Notre Dame was rolling. I’d like to get it back to that point again, and better.”

He had better be patient. This year’s team, even with four senior starters, including star forward LaPhonso Ellis, might not match the 12 victories earned in Phelps’ final season. That’s because the 1991-92 schedule is a coach’s nightmare, a 28-game recipe for getting a pink slip.

In fact, there are those familiar with the program who insist that this season’s roster of opponents was assembled to hasten Phelps’ departure, one way or another. The “Get-Digger-Fired-Schedule” it was sometimes called.

By season’s end, the Irish will have played 15 of their 28 games on the road, including this current nasty nine-game, cross country swing. Sixteen teams on the schedule advanced to postseason play last year, including Duke, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, St. John’s, UCLA and Syracuse.

It is not a schedule for the faint of heart. Actually, it isn’t a schedule for these guys, either.

“There’s no question they play the toughest schedule in the world,” USC Coach George Raveling said.

“Their schedule is horrendous,” said Barry Collier, whose Butler team defeated Notre Dame in the Irish’s season opener. “He must have had that (schedule) in one hand and a multiyear contract in the other.”

Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino, whose Wildcats beat Notre Dame by 21 points Thursday night, told reporters afterward, “If they had a normal schedule, they’d be much better. Unfortunately, someone with a warped sense of humor scheduled these teams.”

If so, MacLeod isn’t laughing. He didn’t know about the nine consecutive road games until the day he showed up for his introductory news conference. Imagine his surprise.

“It’s an, uh, unusual schedule,” MacLeod said, “and I don’t think we’ll see it again here.”

And if it were up to the 6-foot-8, 240-pound Ellis, they wouldn’t see the person responsible for arranging this mess.

“As soon as I find him, he will be disposed of,” Ellis said.

He should go to the offices of Athletic Director Dick Rosenthal and Associate Athletic Director Roger Valdiserri. Phelps had a little something to do with the schedule, but there was no way he approved the 15 road games.

Of course, MacLeod’s rebuilding difficulties go beyond a merciless list of opponents. In truth, the Irish are short a point guard who can run MacLeod’s up-tempo offense. Elmer Bennett is there now, but he is more of a shooting guard than a point man. Malik Russell, all 6-8 of him, is also available, but he is only a freshman.

Nor does it help that Notre Dame has a pronounced roster gap. MacLeod has four seniors, four sophomores, five freshmen, but not one junior on scholarship. As for those five freshmen, they’re not bad (especially Russell), but Michigan’s Fab Five, they aren’t. Problem is, at Notre Dame you can’t resort to stop-gap measures, which means no junior college recruits, no transfers and no redshirting.

The shortcomings have been exposed throughout the season. For example, Collier’s team beat the Irish by seven points, helped in part by Notre Dame’s uncertainty about MacLeod’s system. Equally embarrassing was that only 8,674 fans, about 3,000 fewer than capacity, decided to attend the Irish’s home opener.

“I think any time a coach takes over a program, it takes a while for the team to adjust to how he wants things done,” Collier said.

Maybe so, but it was only Butler’s fourth victory in the last 26 tries against Notre Dame, a record that stretches to 1962.

“It was a very, very big win,” Collier said.

And an indication of things to come for the Irish.

Indiana beat them by 32. Louisville edged them by three. Outmanned Valparaiso had Notre Dame by 11 at halftime before wearing down in the second half. Still, since when does Valparaiso push the Irish around?

“He’s really the right man for the job at this point in the history of Notre Dame,” Valparaiso Coach Homer Drew said.

“But Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, whoever . . . you still have to have players. And then to put them on the road like that . . . “

Next came a loss to Boston College. Then, after an almost unheard of 21-day layoff, Notre Dame had to travel to Kentucky. The Wildcats didn’t play particularly well, lost a starter to an ankle injury shortly after tipoff, but still managed to beat the Irish, 91-70.

“We should be 3-3,” said Ellis, who figures Notre Dame could have beaten Louisville and Butler. “I don’t know if I approached this season very realistically, but I thought, ‘We can handle it.’ I look at Kentucky and I look at their starting lineup and I’m like, ‘Wait, we’re just as good as Kentucky, we can match up with Kentucky.’

“But so far, there seems to be some chemistry that we can’t come up with to get our thing rolling.”

One reason: turnovers. Against Boston College, for instance, the Irish had 17 turnovers in the first half. It hasn’t gotten much better since then.

Ellis, who nearly bolted for the NBA last summer before MacLeod talked him out of it, might be guilty of the biggest turnover in recent Notre Dame recruiting history. Well, that’s not exactly true, but Ellis was assigned to help persuade the acclaimed Miner to sign with the Irish.

At one point, Ellis thought it was a done deal--that is, until someone reminded Miner of a slight South Bend disadvantage. It’s called winter.

“I (lost) him by this much,” said Ellis, holding his thumb and forefinger only a quarter-inch apart. “Had Notre Dame been in L.A., we would have gotten him.”

Such are the recruiting fates--gone today, here tomorrow. At least, that’s what MacLeod is counting on.

Soon, he said, Notre Dame will start luring its share of top 100 high school players to South Bend, winter or no winter. Soon, his faster-paced offense will be an on-campus fixture as recognizable as the Golden Dome. And soon--well, maybe not that soon--the Irish will have a team capable of beating someone other than Valparaiso, of selling out the Joyce Center, of returning to the NCAA tournament.

“My feeling was that Notre Dame would offer stability and that I would have a chance, in time, to build a program, which we’re going to do,” MacLeod said.

“We’ll eventually do it here. It’s going to take time. It’s not going to be a quick turnaround. I wish I could say it would be, but it won’t.”

Until then, MacLeod makes like a swimmer and tries, however difficult it might be, to keep his head--and his team--above water.