How die-hard Notre Dame fan Ethan Roberts fulfilled lifelong dream

Ethan Roberts‘ grandparents lived in an 800-square-foot house in South Bend.

They grew up massive Notre Dame fans, of course. Roberts barely remembers them, but he knows that. His uncle, Jim Cooling, graduated from Notre Dame Law School and has season tickets, and his kids, Roberts’ cousins, went there too.

For as long as he can remember, everyone in the Penn transfer wing’s family bled blue and gold.

“I’d be seven years old, and my parents would be like, ‘Let’s go to the Notre Dame game,'” Roberts told Blue & Gold. “It was a big tradition for us, as a big, Catholic family, to go support the Fighting Irish. That’s kind of what I grew up on.”

Roberts enjoyed tailgating at Notre Dame Stadium, doing so with his mom, Kim, his dad, Andy, and his three sisters, Abbigayle, Lauren and Olivia. But when he committed to play for the Fighting Irish, all he could think about were his trips inside the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame’s campus.

Inside, he would pray that he would one day have the chance to be a Notre Dame basketball player. On Saturday night, when he gave head coach Micah Shrewsberry his commitment, his prayers were answered.

“I was just a civilian a few years before, visiting and going to the football games, and now I’m on this side, in the athletic buildings and being recruited to play there,” Roberts said. “It’s A. Obviously a dream come true but B. I’m just excited to get to work. It’s been more motivating for me than anything. I’m so motivated, more than I’ve ever been, to go to Notre Dame and do great things.”

Finding a home

Roberts never wanted to leave Penn. In fact, despite heading to his fourth school in five seasons, he never wanted to transfer at all.

It’s a narrative that bothers Roberts, the “disloyal” trope for multi-time transfers. He’s heard it plenty, but he knows it’s not true.

“I think that’s the most misleading thing about me,” Roberts said.

Roberts was overlooked out of high school, at which point he was told he was a Division II player. He didn’t even have any Division II offers at one point, but Army took a chance on him late and he began his college career there in 2022. He helped the Black Knights reach the Patriot League semifinals and won the conference’s Rookie of the Year award, but his coach, Jimmy Allen, was fired after the season.

A new coaching staff who didn’t recruit him, alongside the rule that West Point graduates must serve two years of active duty before pursuing professional sports opportunities, made staying at Army a non-option. He actually had some interest from then-Notre Dame associate head coach Anthony Solomon when he entered the portal then, but with Mike Brey‘s staff leaving at the time, nothing came to fruition.

Roberts chose Drake, where he suffered a preseason injury and missed the 2023-24 season. He loved head coach Darian DeVries, though, and wanted to stay.

“I’m like, ‘Yo, Coach, I don’t want to transfer. I’m not the type of kid to transfer. So please, are you gonna stay here?'” Roberts said. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, man. It would take a really special place for me to leave.'”

DeVries proceeded to leave for West Virginia, and later Indiana the following season. With another coaching change, Roberts went portaling again.

He chose Penn, where he thrived. Roberts averaged over 16.8 points per game in his first season with the Quakers under head coach Steve Donahue — who was promptly fired in March 2025. Sick of transferring and happy at Penn, Roberts decided to stay and play for new head coach Fran McCaffery. Under McCaffery, Roberts averaged 16.9 points per game and helped lead Penn to the Ivy League Championship and the NCAA Tournament (though he missed the last three games with a concussion).

Penn was an “amazing situation” for Roberts, but he had to leave. Ivy League rules stipulate graduate students can’t play sports, so if he wanted to continue his basketball career, it had to be somewhere else. And there was only one place, he felt, he would be truly excited to call his new home.

“Entering, I kind of knew where I wanted to go, and that was Notre Dame,” Roberts said. “That was my first call, too. So I was just like, ‘Holy cow, this is perfect, man.’ If I had to leave, it’d be for Notre Dame.”

It was apparent early on in the process that Shrewsberry was very interested this time around. When that became clear, Roberts knew where he was going.

“I’m proud to call Penn home,” Roberts said. “We really turned this place around, and I’m proud to be an alum from here. And now I’m proud to go to my dream school right here.”

How Roberts can help turn Notre Dame around

Roberts’ biggest basketball influence was the 2014-15 Notre Dame men’s basketball team.

He lived in Memphis at the time, though his family would later move much closer to South Bend in Arlington Heights, Ill. Most kids that year looked up to the Kentucky team that season, led by eventual lottery picks Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker and Willie Cauley-Stein. Roberts looked up to Pat Connaughton, Bonzie Colson, Zach Auguste and Matt Farrell, who (among others) helped lead the Irish to back-to-back Elite Eights.

“That team was so good,” Roberts said. “Coach [Mike] Bray‘s teams, I definitely looked up to. I remember being on the circuit, and unfortunately, Notre Dame wasn’t looking at me. But when Coach Brey would be at our games, I was like, ‘This is so cool.'”

Those teams didn’t have the NBA talent of the Kentuckys of the world, although Connaughton is an NBA champion and played in 42 games this season for the Charlotte Hornets. But they did play with a chip on their shoulder. That’s the kind of player Roberts became, particularly after being overlooked out of high school and dealing with significant adversity in his college career.

“Calm seas never made a skilled sailor,” Roberts said. “I think it’s just kind of molded me into who I am. These different opportunities I’ve had, the countless no’s that I’ve gotten, have made me work 1,000 times harder. … I’ve had zero handouts and had to go get it all on my own. That’s what makes all this sweet. I’ve had to scratch and claw.”

It’s what this Notre Dame team will have to do, with a remade roster after Markus Burton, Cole Certa and Jalen Haralson left the building. Roberts will be tasked with replacing much of their offensive output, as a three-level scorer who shoots 40.1% from three-point range and gets to the free-throw line at an extremely high rate.

More than anything, the Irish must take a lesson from the teams Roberts grew up on and punch above their weight.

A Notre Dame fan through and through, Roberts said he watched every game he could last season. He’s well aware the program has fallen on tough times. But when he visited Notre Dame and met the players who returned — Brady Koehler, Logan Imes, Braeden Shrewsberry and Tommy Ahneman — he saw a group that was willing to do that.

“You gotta have guys that worry about the right things and care about us,” Roberts said. “It’s all about us. Meeting the guys reassured me of that. The guys that stayed wanna stay.

“That’s no hate to the guys that left; that’s kind of the nature of it now. But [the ones who stayed] care about the school, care about Notre Dame and it’s special.”