ACC Tournament: Matt Farrell, Notre Dame looking for one more NCAA run

NEW YORK - One day in February 2014, Mike Brey was in his room at the Newark Airport Marriott when his phone rang.

Bobby Hurley, then the head coach at the University of Buffalo, was on the other end. Hurley was not calling the Notre Dame head coach just to catch up, the latter having been on Mike Krzyzewski's Duke staff when Hurley authored one of the great college career's of all-time in the early 1990s. No, Hurley was trying to do his old assistant a solid.

Hurley had caught wind that Brey was in New Jersey to watch Matt Farrell play. The former Point Beach star had committed to Boston College the previous fall, de-committed soon after, and was on the open market. Brey's assistant, Martin Ingelsby, got involved in December, and that night was going to be Brey's first chance to see Farrell play. To that point, there was no scholarship offer.

"'Coach, I usually don’t get involved with this, but he’s really good. I’ve been trying to get him, but I can’t. He reminds me of me,'" Brey recollected Hurley saying on Monday afternoon at Barclays Center, 24 hours before Farrell and Notre Dame opened the ACC Tournament with a 67-64 win over Pittsburgh.

"We offered him that night."

Notre Dame (20-13) came back to defeat Virginia Tech on Wednesday evening, 70-65, to advance to a Thursday quarterfinal against Duke. A win there should be enough to punch the Fighting Irish's ticket to the NCAA Tournament.

As Brey spoke Monday, he admitted that what Farrell has accomplished, especially over the last two seasons, is beyond even what he thought was reasonable.

Farrell took a gigantic step forward as a junior, some labeling him as the most-improved player in the country. He was named All-ACC third team late last week, now trying to help will the Fighting Irish to the NCAA Tournament after Bonzie Colson missed 15 games due to injury. Farrell, too, dealt with injury this season, but no matter.

A win over Duke on Thursday could go a long way to help Farrell dance one more time. Everything happening now, though, can be traced back to two years ago.

The fork in the road

March 2016. Farrell began his sophomore season in the rotation, but January and February were a much different story. He played sparingly for the majority of the ACC schedule, but then the NCAA Tournament came.

Brey decided to start Farrell alongside Demetrius Jackson, another point guard, and he looked terrific in four NCAA games. The Fighting Irish ultimately fell to North Carolina in the East Regional final. It was then decision time. The playing time wasn't there for much of the season, so transferring elsewhere was a topic of conversation.

"It was tough, meeting with my dad, trying to figure out what to do, maybe leaving, maybe staying," Farrell said. "It was back and forth, but that run in the NCAA Tournament really helped me come closer to the guys."

Some of this hinged on whether or not Jackson, a junior and, at one point, a projected top-15 pick in that spring's NBA Draft, decided to return for his senior year. Hindsight being 20/20, Brey had the pitch ready. If Jackson stayed, the NCAA Tournament showed that running two point guards can work. If Jackson goes, well, the problem solves itself. Jackson ultimately left, winding up as the 45th overall pick.

"I would’ve liked to talk to Coach Brey about what he was thinking," Farrell said. "If Demetrius would have stayed, would we have done that two-guard lineup, same as we did here at the NCAA Tournament? If that was the plan, yeah, I probably would have stayed. I loved being on the floor with him. Obviously, he left, Coach gave me the keys, and it is what it is.”

"I think he would’ve stayed, because he really was part of it and we played them together in the NCAA Tournament," Brey said. "If he had not played in the NCAA Tournament, and Demitrius came back, I would’ve had a hell of a hard sales job keeping him. We started him, he played those four games, and they played together, so even if he did come back, we showed we could play the two of them together.

"I think everybody knew, and he and Demitrius were really close, that Demitrius was gone. Between him playing and Demitrius leaving, I went from having a hit man on me, to being in the family will."

Farrell started all 36 games as a junior, taking steps forward in every statistic and metric imaginable. Notre Dame went 26-10, losing in the second round of the NCAA Tournament after consecutive Elite Eight appearances. Farrell was set to return, as was Colson, an All-American as a junior.

An under-the-radar Final Four candidate was one label attached to the Fighting Irish last offseason, but it wasn't going to be that easy.

This Notre Dame team's destiny

Notre Dame lost to Miami in South Bend on Feb. 19 to fall to 16-12 overall. The next morning, Brey took Farrell and Colson out to breakfast.

Brey needed to have a realistic discussion with them. The main point of emphasis that morning was that this Notre Dame team's destiny could be the NIT, and that would be well-outside the norm.

“I just really wanted to kind of level with them, and they were great," Brey said. "I did that with the team the whole time."

Farrell's four years have seen nothing but success. He's been to three NCAA Tournaments and two regional finals. He's played in an ACC Tournament championship game. The Fighting Irish won the prestigious Maui Invitational in November, Farrell riding a three-day tour de force to MVP honors.

Notre Dame rose to No. 5 in both polls after Maui, but things went downhill. It got rolled at Michigan State, then lost to Ball State and Indiana. Colson broke his foot on Dec. 30 against Georgia Tech, Farrell missed five games across 23 days in January with an ankle injury.

On Jan. 29, at the end of a 22-point loss at Duke, Blue Devils fans began chanting "NIT" in Notre Dame's direction. It was Notre Dame's sixth-straight loss, and it was 13-9, so Brey took it as a compliment.

Farrell is now healthy, Colson returned Feb. 28 against Pitt. The Fighting Irish gave No. 1 Virginia all it could handle Saturday at full-strength, thoroughly feeding the notion it is more dangerous than its No. 10 seed in Brooklyn indicates.

The win over Virginia Tech put them deep in the at-large conversation. That, plus a win over Duke in a makes it a lock.

“With Bonzie back, and everybody at full strength, we feel like we have the edge we had down in Maui," Farrell said. "That edge is back, and we know how special we can be. We’ve got a great group of guys, and guys who had to step up throughout the year. We’re a confident group and we know in the back of our minds what we have to do postseason-wise."

No matter what happens this week, and really on Selection Sunday, Farrell can only enhance his legacy now. It stands to reason Hurley knew what he was talking about when he called Brey that day.

"He has done more than even I thought he would," Brey said.

“When you try to do the right thing, and you surround yourself with good people, people say good things can happen, and they do," Farrell said. "I am a testament to that. I was confused at times, and I just tried to do what I do, keep working, trust the system, and trust the coaches. You surround yourself with good people, and good things can happen."

Staff Writer Josh Newman: jnewman@app.com