Virginia Tech eliminated Notre Dame from the ACC Tournament and officially ended their season in unceremonious fashion. The early exit marked the end of Mike Brey’s career with the Fighting Irish. While he announced earlier in the season that he’d be stepping down at the end of the season as Notre Dame’s head coach, Brey is not retiring.
While Brey’s next steps are currently unknown, that didn’t stop him from absolutely blasting the league’s officials on his way out
‘I’ll be very honest now that I’m not in the league anymore,” Brey said on Tuesday night about the ACC officials. “I think that last play, if you have an ‘A’ officiating crew and that was not an ‘A’ crew, you say, ‘basketball play.’ And we shoot the free throws and play basketball. I think we got a little over analyzation on that part of it.”
Mike Brey on the Pedulla/Zona review: "I’ll be very honest, now that I’m not in the league anymore, if you have an 'A' officiating crew, and that was not an 'A' crew, you say 'basketball play,' we shoot the free throws and we play basketball."
— Luke DeCock (@LukeDeCock) March 8, 2023
He took exception that after a lengthy video review, one of his players, Matt Zona, was called for a technical foul on a play in which he was fouled. The foul on Virginia Tech’s Sean Pedulla stood, but Zona was also whistled for a technical foul after Pedulla received a bloody lip on the play.
“Look, Virginia Tech made plays, but I don’t think that was handled right,” Brey continued. “Now, we had some turnovers and made mistakes too, but I think you go ‘basketball play’ in a great game and you shoot the free throws and you let the game play out. That’s a big-time crew.”
Virginia Tech went on to win by 3.
