SOUTH BEND — He once believed it best to leave behind something he long loved.
So he did. Notre Dame power forward Logan Duncomb walked away from basketball. Gave in and gave it up after two seasons of struggles at Indiana and a third (albeit truncated) at Xavier in his hometown of Cincinnati.
Something happened almost immediately after Duncomb decided in the fall of 2023 that he was done with college basketball. He wanted to run back and run it back. He wanted to find nine others, grab a ball, get to a court and do what he had always done.
Play the game. Bang bodies down low. Compete. Stare down someone across from him who might run faster, jump higher, or look better and say, “I’m going to bust your (butt). I’m going to be better than you in every phase, in every way.”
A week after he left, Duncomb wanted back in. His runs were limited to rec league games at Xavier. Those nights when he was clearly the best player on a court of biology majors and beer leaguers were enough to convince him that he was going to get another shot at that sport.
You could say that he fell back in love with basketball. You would be wrong.
“My love for the game was never gone,” Duncomb said days after graduating from Winthrop where he spent the previous two college basketball seasons. “As an athlete who’s always been at an elite level, you face adversity and think, ‘Man, is this what I want to do? Did I ever choose this for myself?’
“It was more out of a struggle that I was trying to find reasoning for what I was going through, so I quit. I thought that was what I wanted. A week of being out of basketball, I was more miserable than I had ever been.”
Duncomb needed basketball. He also needed a fresh start far from the white-hot spotlight that shone at Indiana and far from his hometown. He found it 480 miles away in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He found it at Winthrop. Head coach Mark Prosser’s late father, Skip, had strong Cincinnati roots. Tony Rack, an Eagle assistant, is, like Duncomb, a Cincinnati Moeller High School graduate.
At Winthrop, the Cincinnati kid found comfort. He found success. He found himself.
After one season as a reserve, Duncomb delivered a dominant 2025-26. He averaged career highs for points (18.3) and rebounds (8.9) and for minutes (24.1) and field goal percentage (.605). He averaged double doubles for points (21.3) and rebounds (10.3) in Big South play. He set single-season program records for free throws made (200) and attempted (271) for a Winthrop team that went 23-11, 13-3.
In one league game, he went for 38 points and 15 rebounds. He looked like the determined dude who had a host of high majors chasing him at Moeller, where he helped the Crusaders go 29-0 and win a state championship as a sophomore on a team that featured New York Knicks guard Miles McBride.
“That’s the kid that I remember,” long-time Moeller head coach Carl Kremer said of watching Duncomb this past season. “He played with extreme confidence. He played with a high motor.”
The more Duncomb did, the more confident he became in his game. In his place. In basketball. When he did, it was like giving the middle finger to those who doubted him.
“It was like, ‘I (freaking) told you so,” Duncomb said. “This last year gave me a lot of confidence about myself and who I am. I’m a basketball player. I’ve always been a basketball player.”
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Notre Dame was staggering toward an early end to the 2025-26 season when Kremer’s phone at Moeller rang one winter’s day. On the other end was Notre Dame general manager Pat Garrity. Duncomb fit the profile of someone likely to explore the transfer portal at season’s end — a talented big man with one year of eligibility who had dominated in a mid-major league.
Garrity promised/offered Kremer nothing. He was simply doing his due diligence. If Duncomb decided to level up, Notre Dame might be a possibility. It needed a veteran big. It needed the 23-year-old Duncomb. He quickly became No. 1 on the Irish transfer portal wish (get) list.
“They showed such interest,” Kremer said. “I had a funny feeling that it would go this way.”
It went that way. Prior to entering the portal, Duncomb also had done his due diligence. He remembered Irish head coach Micah Shrewsberry from their time together in the Big Ten. He called around about Shrewsberry and received plenty of positive feedback. Shrewsberry had a staff that appealed to Duncomb.
In some ways, Notre Dame was a larger version of what Duncomb had at Moeller — a tight-knit community that felt like family. He felt a certain brotherhood. The more he looked at Notre Dame, the more it fit.
He gives the Irish something they haven’t had since 2021-22 — an effective big man who can do consistent damage in the post. That year, it was graduate student (and Yale transfer) Paul Atkinson, Jr. This year, it will be the 6-foot-10, 250-pound Duncomb.
That Shrewsberry hasn’t sniffed a winning season in his first three at Notre Dame doesn’t concern Duncomb. He sees positives in a sea of negatives.
“The guys he’s bringing in, the guys he’s got coming back all have the same mindset that they just want to win so badly,” Duncomb said. “That’s what you need to succeed. If you’ve got a bunch of guys whose only goal is to win games and succeed, you’re going to succeed.”
In June, Duncomb will pack up his life and head west from Cincinnati. For the second time in his college basketball career, he will play in the state of Indiana. It didn’t go well that first time around down south. Duncomb believes it will the second time up north.
He’s not the same person and not the same player who sat and watched and wondered for two years in Bloomington. He’s more confident. He has more conviction. He can better handle the highs and the lows. He better knows himself.
Duncomb’s already done a lot, but there’s still more to do. At Notre Dame. In the Atlantic Coast Conference. In the game he never stopped loving, even when he stopped playing.
“I find so much beauty in the game,” he said. “I love everything about what it’s given me, what it’s shown me, the places it’s taken me. I finally feel like the old me, the me who was getting recruited out of high school, the me who the NBA was where I was destined to be. I feel all that again.”
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: How an old Notre Dame basketball guy found a new appreciation for the game
Reporting by Tom Noie, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
