Written by John Brice
There had been the youth camps at Notre Dame, myriad Fighting Irish men’s basketball games and a blossoming relationship with Demetrius Jackson – a name synonymous with Irish hoops success a decade ago.
And, then, there had been the fandom of another national college basketball power – about the only time the local kid from La Porte, Indiana, had found his way inside Purcell Pavilion for Notre Dame basketball.
Today, freshman point guard Markus Burton and redshirt-sophomore J.R. Konieczny are homegrown products at the foundational stage of first-year Notre Dame Glenn & Stacey Murphy head coach Micah Shrewsberry’s program rebuild.
Though different in their paths to play beneath the fabled Golden Dome, both Burton and Konieczny embrace this moment to help reassert Irish basketball and fashion an example for area youth who may also foster dreams of wearing Irish green.
“It was sort of unreal for me, because I liked Notre Dame a lot, and it was basically a dream school for me, my hometown and a no-brainer,” said Burton, who capped his record-shattering prep career at Penn High School with the coveted Indiana Mr. Basketball award – just the third Irish signee all-time to procure the accolade. “Blake Wesley and J.R. Konieczny, I was a really big fan of theirs too.”
Initially, the rangy, 6-foot-7 Konieczny – a second-team Indiana All-State selection who had finished fifth in Mr. Basketball balloting in 2021 – had not envisioned a gilded path to Notre Dame.
“It just all felt super surreal,” Konieczny, who sat out the 2022-23 season to hone his all-around game and ensure his overall health, said. “The whole recruitment process was super stressful for me, and then when I committed to Notre Dame, it was a huge weight off my shoulders. I had never really expected myself to be at Notre Dame, but then the stars aligned.”
As Burton transitions through the early months of his collegiate career and Konieczny begins in earnest the hardwood portion of his Notre Dame journey, they are mindful of this moment together – in their own career arcs and in a historic dawn of a new era of Irish basketball under Shrewsberry, also a Hoosier State native with basketball bona fides spanning the NCAA to the NBA.
“We talk about it a lot, but I mean right now, we kind of just have fun with it,” said Burton of his conversations with Konieczny about the chance to be a hometown beacon of Notre Dame basketball. “We talk about how blessed we are to be able to go to Notre Dame and play basketball here, to have this opportunity.
“It’s really fun. Coach Shrewsberry is a really good coach, loves his players and teaches us what need to do. A lot of us adapted really well, and I feel like once we get playing and people see how hard we play, we’re going to show people how hard we work and take pride in everyday practice. It’s going to be really fun.”
A new era of Notre Dame basketball; a foundation formed in its community.
“We always have a good sense of what it means to rep the city and the area and rep Notre Dame and our hometown,” Konieczny said. “We’ve been doing it for quite some years,; Markus being Mr. Basketball, had a great high school career that let people know who he was. I think it means a lot to both of us. We’re going to do everything we can to win and see Notre Dame fans happy and South Bend fans happy and just everyone in this community.
“We’re going to work our butts off no matter what’s going on; every guy on our team has that dog in him. And I think that really stands to what we’re trying to do.”
— ND —