SOUTH BEND – This coming season should be it for two Notre Dame basketball players.
In any other year, this coming season would be it for two Notre Dame basketball players. Thanks to the NCAA, this coming season might not be it for two Notre Dame basketball players.
No matter how 2026-27 unfolds for Notre Dame basketball, guards Logan Imes and Braeden Shrewsberry, the only traditional seniors on the roster, will have something they never planned to have after four full seasons of college basketball.
The option to call it a career or return for a fifth season.
Starting with the 2027-28 academic year, all Division I athletes will follow the new five-for-five (age based) athletic model in late June by the NCAA. No longer will there be redshirt seasons to delay the competition clocks of an offensive lineman in football or a shortstop in softball. All athletes will receive five years of eligibility. They could play for one year. They could play all five.
Until 2027-28, the four classes of athletes (let’s drop the student tag, shall we?) will have the option of staying/playing the standard four years or returning for a bonus fifth. This year’s senior class of college athletes will be the first with that option.
“That’s nice to know,” Imes said. “It’s hard to think about that when the whole time (in your career), you’re thinking about four years. We’ll see how the year goes and then think about it after the season, but it is nice if I want to do that.”
Like his former AAU teammate and current college teammate, Shrewsberry hasn’t thought much — really, hasn’t thought at all — about what a fifth year at Notre Dame (or somewhere else if they choose) might entail. He’s focused on this coming season and what it could/should look like.
There’s plenty to do now without worrying about what to do later.
“It’s exciting,” Shrewsberry said of a fifth year. “I came in (to college) at the right time, I guess. It’s a blessing to know that, but anything can happen.”
Former Notre Dame guard Dane Goodwin currently holds the program record for games played at 158. Classmate Nate Laszewski is second at 157. Both played five full seasons after being granted an added year because of COVID-19. Both career games played marks carry an asterisk in the record book.
Prior to them, former Irish guard Rex Pflueger (2015-20) held the school record for games played with 141. He also played five seasons, but not five full seasons, after suffering a knee injury that wiped out the second half of his junior year in 2018-19.
Rounding out the top five in career games played at Notre Dame are Pat Connaughton (139) and Steve Vasturia (137), who each did it in the traditional four-year window.
Should they stay healthy and should Notre Dame extend its seasons over each of the next two, Imes and Shrewsberry would challenge the top five for career games played. They enter 2026-27 having played 88 and 90 career games in their first three seasons.
Each team plays a minimum of 31 regular season games.
“You just have to treat this like your last year, because it could be,” Shrewsberry said.
Myriad reasons will factor into the decision of both to either call it a career next spring or return next summer. Chief among them is the goal of doing something that Notre Dame basketball hasn’t done much of during their first three years — win.
“I want to be able to look back on my career and say we finished on a high note and accomplished something that we set out to do,” Imes said. “I don’t want to be remembered as being a part of the dark ages of Notre Dame basketball.”
Each may have two years to shift that narrative.
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: One decision awaits two Notre Dame basketball players next spring
Reporting by Tom Noie, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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By Tom Noie, South Bend Tribune | USA TODAY Network
