Notre Dame basketball has always lived in the gigantic shadow of the Notre Dame Football program, and that will most likely never change. It doesn’t mean that Notre Dame, historically, is a mediocre basketball program- far from it.
Notre Dame has long been known as “giant killers” and has had some of the best players in the history of the game as well as a legendary head coach. They operated much like the football team for decades as an independent and its schedule set the Irish up for a lot of those big games.
Notre Dame has still never won a national championship in the Tournament era which started in 1939.