OK time to move past bowls and football. Recruiting and Mens/Womens Basketball, Mens Hockey are the topics! Irish got a big recruit today in Nyles Morgan. We really loaded up on LB's in this class, some them no doubt will get bigger and move down to DE, and maybe a guy like Tranquil will move to safety. But it was good news for the Irish. Not sure if we'll add another player in this class, most of the guys we are still pursuing are leaning other directions. Always possible something will change but it'll be a surprise. Irish Men beat Duke at home, unlike the Ohio State game they didn't let it get away at the end. Freshman Demetrius Jackson hit a couple of free throws at the end to seal the deal, but in general we didn't do well from the free throw line or we'd have won going away. Inside play by the Irish was great and Pat Cannaugton posterize future NBA top 5 draft choice Jabari Parker with a great dunk late in the game. 6'4" white boys aren't supposed to do that! Irish Women are #2 in the nation and looking very strong. Irish Hockey is playing tonight, actually right now, at Fenway Park vs BC. I don't think Joel is there to root the lads on!
Tennessee women are 3 spots down at #5. We haven't fallen far from the Pat Summitt days.Holly was a good pupil. UConn is at their normal #1 spot.
ND <t>The Nyles Morgan commit was huge! Great player and in a position of need!!! <br/> <br/> I still would really like to get the Isiah McKenzie kid. I understand they are trying hard to get him over the academic hurdles. Kid is a flat out play-maker. Hope they can get him in.</t>
Shocking news.... Randy Waldrum the Notre Dame Womens Soccer coach who has built a national power at Notre Dame resigned to take a job as the Head Coach of the new Houston Dash, a new team in Womens Professional Soccer League. He's originally from Texas and said he also wanted to get back to where his family is and be closer to his daughter who is going to make him a grandfather. Notre Dame womens soccer will miss him, he did a great job. We are now an established program and play in probably the top womens soccer league so if they are willing to pay they should be able to attract a top coach. I hope they do, it's been fun having great womens basketball and soccer.
Tom I think there is a good chance that UConn will go undefeated again this year. There starting 5 is amazing, somebody said their bench would be a top 10 team.
ND <t>Well Tuitt has announced he is gone to the NFL. Wish we could have had him one more year but hey, that's his call. Good luck Mr Tuitt. Been nice having you with the Irish.</t>
I don't get why people are in love so much with the 4-3 defense? OU and Alabama both run a base 3-4 defense, but can line up in a 4-3. Diaco had us in a base 3-4 and we could line up in a 4-3 when we wanted and supposedly we did nearly 50% of the time. At one time the rationale was that it was easier to find LB than DL's, now everybody says it's too tough to find a NG and it's also hard to find LB's. One thing for sure in the 3-4 you need a lot of LB and those guys inside have to be stout because they only have the NG to protect them. I like the 3-4 with flexibility to line up in the 4-3. What I don't like that much is the bend don't break, keep the play in front of you mentality. It's frustrating to watch teams move the ball with the short passing game almost at will. I suspect though that the new DCoord, will continue with our 3-4 base defense.
What's wrong with the 5-2? :lol: Seriously, mobile DEs in the 235-250 range with athleticism who can drop back in short pass coverage but also seal the outside vs. the running game? It's not trendy, but it can be effective. IMO, the key for any defensive scheme is getting the right athletes with the right attitude and coaching them effectively. Therein lies the challenge.
I like the 4-3 better. It gives the offense fewer blocking schemes. Also, we are going to be a lot smaller next year up front. I played an coached the 5-2. It was a great defense against the option ut I have no idea how it would work against the spread.
When I was at Texas, back in the days when a team that threw it a lot did so maybe 25 times a game, the base defense was a 5-3 or even a 6-2. Nickel package? ha ha ha....
I remember an exchange back in maybe 02 or so, perhaps a bit earlier, with O'B on here. The topic at hand was the new fad of teams using a hybrid 3-4/4-3 look depending on how you use the OLB/DE. At the time, the media 'experts' would only refer to teams using a 3-4 or 4-3 or 3-3-5 or whatever. If you actually watch what was going on, there were teams (especially in the SEC as well as a few others) were taking oversized, yet mobile OLBs and putting their hand down in rush situations. This was something I wanted the Irish to do, and it was something he was telling me didn't exist. Here we are all these years later and it's fairly common knowledge. It's hard to find DTs or NGs. To me, that's really the problem with the 4-3. It's not a scheme issue, it's a bodies issue especially when you consider that position is perhaps the worst performing position academically in terms of recruiting. In a 3-4/4-3 hybrid scheme, you only need to get one big ass in each class and you're LOADED up the middle. What you really need in this scheme is the big body, athletic types that Kelly is clearly going after in spades. The school my son will go to, and their middle school, uses Alabama's defense. The position my son plays is the Jack. At the middle school level, he's primarily a DE and it looks like a 4-3. As he gets older, unless he changes positions, he'll have more drop responsibility. Since so many people are going to the spread/read zone look, here is an example of what Alabama's 3-4 looks like against the zone stretch. You'll notice, it looks just like a 4-3. The defense relies on having an athletic big man at Jack to flex between the 2 faces.
ND <t>From what I'm reading things are starting to trend well for the McKenzie kid. This kid really is lighting in a bottle and could be used several different ways on offense. He wants to go to ND and it still looks like the coaching staff is trying to help.</t>
I've been seeing the same things Tim, reports that he has a qualifying test score. The question was his GPA, that he needed to improve it and it's being reported he had a good fall semester. He certainly is talented.
Looking at next years schedule, it's not impossible that ND could be unbeaten going into Tallahassee to face FSU. It'll be tough as we'd have to beat Mich, Stanford and North Carolina. The other teams Rice, Purdue and Syracuse should be wins. I tried to see who FSU would play in their 1st 6 games but the only thing I could find is that they open with Oklahoma State at Jerry World, should be a tough game, then the Citadel, and then undetermined ACC foes till the Irish show up in the 7th game.
Notre Dame host's Alabama in Hockey this week. Alabama-Huntsville that is! :roll: The lost the Frozen Fenway to BC. I watched a little of it, one thing I didn't know...ice can get too cold. They were having problems with the rink because the ambient air temp was too cold, making the ice brittle.
UAH is a good team. ND will beat them though. The Irish are going to struggle playing in the high on skill, low on size, East. They need to change the way they play/recruit and that may be tough. This is a CCHA/WCHA style team playing in a different forum now.
I have read that there is a school of thought that said ND would have been better suited for the WCHA, than Hockey East.