The stud freshman point guard used the NBA Draft process to gather feedback on his game and will return to lead the Irish this season
Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports
Although this was largely the expected result, Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s hoops fans can breathe a collective sigh of relief now that it’s official — Markus Burton is returning to Notre Dame for the 2024-2025 season.
Notre Dame's Markus Burton tells me that he will withdraw from the 2024 NBA Draft and return to school next season.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) May 17, 2024
Averaged 17.5 PPG, 4.3 APG, and 3.3 RPG last year as a freshman.
Will be one of the best guards in the ACC in 2024-25.
Burton had entered his name into the NBA Draft so as to collect feedback on what he needs to work on to eventually make it to the league. The consensus was that the 5’11”, 166-lb freshman wasn’t a serious draft candidate this season due to his size and not-great three-point shooting (30% on the season in 2023-2024), and so his withdrawal from the draft and return to the Irish wasn’t much of a surprise.
Still, it’s a massively reassuring bit of news for Irish fans, as Burton was named ACC Rookie of the Year last season and stands to be one of the best guards in the conference as a sophomore, if not in the entire country.
As a true freshman, Burton averaged 17.5 points per game (6th in the ACC) to go along with 4.3 assists, 3.3 rebounds, and 1.9 steals. He was typically one of the only Irish players capable of creating his own shot or scoring in key moments, as well as one of the only trustworthy ball handlers to run the offense through.
He was pretty inconsistent from long-range, though, and had some turnover issues throughout the season. However, his 3-point shooting did improve a bit toward the end of the year, and some of the sloppiness with the ball could easily be attributed to a true freshman being asked to handle the ball so often and do so much to make the offense work.
It’s entirely reasonable to expect Burton to improve drastically in his shooting efficiency over the next year or two as the Irish add some additional scorers to the squad, and as he gets more help in the backcourt his assist-to-turnover ratio may stand to improve a bit as well, even with how much he’ll dominate the ball as a score-first point guard.
Burton was the only one of Mike Brey’s final three signees in the 2023 class to hold firm on his commitment to play for Notre Dame, as his original classmates Brady Dunlap and Parker Friedrichsen asked for releases from their letters of intent when Brey stepped down so that they could sign elsewhere. As a Mishawaka native, Burton’s dream was always to play for the Irish, and so he reaffirmed his intentions to stick with Notre Dame, and paired with Micah Shrewsberry’s sharpshooting son, Braeden Shrewsberry, to form an exciting young backcourt by season’s end.
Burton staying in the draft would have significantly decreased both the floor and the ceiling of this upcoming season’s Irish squad, and so it’s a nice bit of news to cap off a busy news week for the Irish — welcome back, Markus Burton!
