After the Feb. 28 loss to Towson, Ingelsby’s locker room message was one of resilience. “If we don’t figure this out, get better, get tougher, the season’s going to be over pretty quickly,” he told his players.

To his wife, Colleen, he texted a note of defeat: “Open a bottle of wine and let’s drink our sorrows.” Ever the coach and critic herself, she simply replied, “Nope. You’re going to come home and figure this sh*t out.”

It’s exactly what the head coach needed to hear. Ingelsby spent the following day, Tuesday, March 1, with his staff, assessing everything they would need to help their players move forward. On Wednesday, he took his standard practice plans and ripped them up, returning to old high school drills to help toughen his players while regaining their confidence: loose ball drills, charge drills, full-court one-on-ones. When a player missed his shot, he would run the steps as a reminder of consequences and accountability.

“The guys believed they were the best team in the league, but we weren’t playing like it,” Ingelsby says. “I needed to get that out of them.”

Each day, they improved. They conversed. “We had a good session where guys were able to share their thoughts, verbalize some things, challenge each other,” the head coach says. “That’s the making of a great team, when you’re comfortable enough to handle constructive criticism.”

And, he adds, “that’s the beauty of sport—how you use adversity to recalibrate, refocus and get better.”

By Friday, March 4, Delaware men’s basketball was in Washington, D.C., in the conference playoff, heeding the lessons of their losses and ultimately winning the games that would send them to the NCAA tournament.

“It’s an incredible feeling,” Ingelsby says. “I’m so proud of them to experience winning a championship and be on this stage.”

It’s a stage the head coach knows well. As a Notre Dame point guard and senior captain, he helped lead his college team back to the NCAA for the first time in almost a decade. He would return eight more times as assistant head coach for his alma mater, where he worked and learned under Mike Brey, the former UD head coach who took over at Notre Dame in 2000, during Ingelsby’s senior year.

A former point guard himself, Brey must have seen a younger version of himself in Ingelsby.

“I think there’s nothing more powerful in life than having someone believe in you,” Ingelsby says now. “[Brey] believed in me as a player.”

It’s the same approach Ingelsby applies now, in the role his mentor once held. He can still picture Coach Brey’s house on Selection Sunday, the jumps of joy when Notre Dame’s name appeared in the bracket.

“It’s like Christmas morning for college basketball,” Ingelsby says. “The nerves, the jitters of where you’ll go, who you’ll play. That’s what I want so much for our guys.”

And indeed, that’s what his guys now have.

“I tell them, ‘Enjoy it. You created a memory that will last forever. You’ll be forever champions. Soak it in. Enjoy it. We’ll get back to work this weekend.’”