The first two games of the NBA finals and all of the draft talk has me in a very hoopsy mood, so let's take a look at the current position of the Notre Dame basketball team.  When we last left our beloved squad, the Worst Game Plan Ever was implemented against Washington State in the second round of the NCAA tournament, with a proud, potent offense left dead along the side of the road by Tony Bennett's defensively suffocating crew.

After the season ends, no one is quite sure what head coach Mike Brey does with his time.  Despite his success with the program - tournament appearances, Big East Coach of the Year awards, twenty win seasons, clean record, entertaining brand of basketball, extremely nice to all students and fans - Irish fans restrain themselves from fully embracing him due to the decided lack of recruiting.  Even when he does bring in a few studs (the Tory Jackson/Luke Harangody combination), it's almost as if it's by luck, with the rest of his time spent trying to loot back-up centers from the Ivy League.

(We spent an hour the one night just bouncing suggestions off of one another of what Coach Brey actually does with his time when there's not basketball being played.  We assume he has a lovely house up in Michigan where he turns into Mike Leach-lite, gardening, watching movies - it would be a Sydney Pollack marathon this summer, for sure - and dancing around on one of those giant pianos like Tom Hanks in Big.)

But last month it broke that Coach Brey had somehow done it again, a blind squirrel executing a perfect, Danny Ocean-style plan to kidnap Mr. Peanut and demand a king's ransom from the folks at Planters.  He lured not one, but two young, productive players with multiple years of remaining eligibility to transfer to South Bend.  First it was Mississippi State guard Ben Hansbrough who decided to move north, followed a couple of weeks later by Purdue forward Scott Martin.  When looking at the roster for the next few years, this could not have worked out better.

The 2008-2009 squad is already considered (however wisely or unwisely) by many in the media as a national title contender, as it returns everyone but Rob Kurz from last season's 25-win team.  Kurz's minutes will most likely be filled by Ty Nash and expanded minutes for Jonanthan Peoples and Luke Zeller, while the heavy lifting will be done by the Harangody/Jackson/Ryan Ayers/Kyle McAlarney/Zach Hillesland quintet.  Any new player added to the roster this season would probably get limited minutes since the rotation, barring injury, suspension or meltdown, seems rather firmly established.

2009-2010 was going to be the tricky one, as McAlarney, Ayers and Zeller all moved on.  With Hansbrough (yes, it is Tyler's younger, smaller brother) and Martin almost perfectly stepping into the shows of K-Mac and Ayers, this problem is seemingly solved.  Granted, Harangody's potential early entry to the NBA is the wild card in all of this*, but the 2010 tournament could see a crunch-time line-up of Jackson, Hansbrough, Martin (who apparently prefers playing the three), Nash and Harangody.  It's possible Hansbrough and Martin will struggle with the transition to a new school and style of play, but if they just repeat their underclassmen performances in which they were productive and played a decent amount of minutes, that team will be able to compete for a conference championship for potentially the fourth straight season.

So how did Brey do it?  A lot of questions were floated around the boards about why young players getting a lot of time at a school would want to transfer out.  The suggestion has been floated out that in regards to Martin, he was unhappy with how the pecking order was established at Purdue and wanted a fresh start.  I love the piece I linked to there because it desperately wants to throw Martin under the bus, but can't.  See:

Scott is a nice, intelligent kid, but I honestly believe basketball for him is all about what is good for Scott and not necessarily the team for which he plays.

He was a star at Valparaiso High School, and Hummel was the ringleader of the supporting cast. When the two Valpo kids arrived in West Lafayette, Hummel quickly step to the front, and Martin never quite got there. Martin endured a horrific shooting slump, almost quit the team in December and never eased back into the starting lineup, although he always was on the floor during crunch time. In fact, Martin played extremely well late in the season.

Have you ever seen a writer so disappointed a player didn't turn into Kobe Bryant circa 2004 and just start gunning it?  Here's a laundry list of stuff that went wrong for the guy, followed by the "But, oh yeah, he battled through all of that to play great" just haphazardly tacked on.

Hansbrough was apparently more about style of play, which wouldn't be the first time that happened.  Much like you're going to see free agents flocking to play for the Knicks once the salary cap is fixed due to Mike D'Antoni's system, it amazes me more top-notch players don't want to lace them up for Brey.   If you only caught a couple of Irish games a year, you'd see a team that's having a blast playing in a fun system that includes a rather long leash given in regards to shot selection and turnovers.  Some people would write this seeming lack of control up as a problem with Brey, but I'm surprised more people don't want to play for him (the lack of NBA success might have something to do with it; but QUINN).  Perhaps if the Hansbrough and Martin experiments go well then even more players, whether they be top-notch recruits (Brandon Jennings, are you sure you want to play in Arizona?  It's awful hot there, and your hair would look great outlined against the Dome.) or quality transfers, will consider playing in the Joyce Center.

(Of course, some renovations of the basketball facilities wouldn't hurt this, either.  If I was a big-time recruit, i probably wouldn't want to come to a place where it was so strikingly apparent how unimportant I was in the view of the athletic department.  Thanks, Dr. White!)

So say what you will about Coach Brey, but he's done it again, filling out the Irish roster for the rest of the decade.  This will be an interesting season for Brey, as they'll be a lot of expectations on this team instead of his usual position of flying under the radar.  He can earn a lot of fans or prove a lot of detractors right with how he handles the 2009 team, but at least he'll be getting a passing grade for the 2008 offseason.

* - I will spend a whole post sometime later in this dual offseason of darkness and distress looking at Harangody's potential early entry status.  Maybe we'll do it NBA draft week, which will provide me a nice, cheap segue to do a liveblog of the draft on a college blog with no players from said college being selected.