The Four Best Notre Dame Basketball Uniforms

I’ve found a few things to be true during my time on uniform watch. Less is most often more. Tradition matters. Sleeves on NBA jerseys are weird. While a blue jersey may be what you would and should see if you were to look up Notre Dame football in the dictionary, the best Irish basketball jerseys play up the gold of the iconic dome, in particular. After running the numbers, I’ve come up with the ranking of the four best Notre Dame basketball uniforms. Not sorry.

Alexa, Play “So Fresh, So Clean.”

Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

These white alternates are textbook CLEAN. I give the top spot to this white and gold freshness. While I almost always give style points to dialed back gold, there’s a boldness to this color choice that just works. As the cleanest combination on the list, this uni offers the ideal glimmer of gold against the white. The gold is just metallic enough to call to mind the golden dome, but subtle enough to avoid hogging attention; the proportion is perfect here.

Every Day is St. Patrick’s Day

Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images

This shade of gold takes me back to Pat Connaughton’s Irish days. I’ve called out the Washington Wizards on this blog about the importance of using gold wisely. This gold is just muted enough to work for both the jersey and the shorts together. The design incorporates both school colors and a shot of green without resulting in an overwhelming finished product.

Shamrock Style

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images

This one strays from my gold focus, but this one makes the list because we see the basketball team pull off an amount of green that was just too much for the football team in the 2015 Shamrock Series design. The outline around the script and the trim on the shorts tie up the look to form another balanced use of gold, blue and green. It pained me to put this green and clean uni up against its gold counterpart in the number two spot, but I ranked it third purely because of the whole “not a school color” thing. #tiebreaker

Y2Slay

Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

A combination of muted gold and Celtic-inspired script earns points for this throwback uniform. I would love to see future uniforms incorporate a text style inspired by the university’s Irish heritage. Block serif lettering may be safe, but it lacks character. Though this gold is a smart choice, a shade just a twinge toward that of the number two spot on this list would have complemented the script more effectively.

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