I don't know if anyone else noticed that during one of the North Carolina games, the announcer said that Luke Maye, the hero of the KY game, was heavily recruited by ND and chose UNC over us. He looks like a Brey kind of player.
Didn't know that, but then I don't follow Basketball recruiting very much. Brey needs a kid who is ok with being patient and waiting his turn, he says all the time he want's an old team. Jr's and Sr's... He should have that again next year. I really think that Bonzie can have a 1st team AA year if one of the bigs, Geben or Mooney (or both) can play significant minutes in the Post and allow Bonzie to play off that. Also I have the feeling that Bonzie and Farrell are leaders more like Pat Connaughton and Jerian Grant. This year Vasturia and Beachem were more of the silent leaders it looked to me.
I keep reading all these good things about everything ND Football this spring. Wimbush looks great, Josh Adams, Dexter Williams, Tony Jones Jr look to be the best 3 at RB we've had in years. OL is starting to take shape, with Alex Bars being named the RG and Kraemer and Eichenberg battling it out for the RT slot. WR's a lot of praise for Claypool, Alize Jones, ESB as WR's, TE's looking great. Offense should be very good. Less positive about Defense, but still some good things. Nyles Morgan seems to be poised to have a great Sr. year. Drue Tranquil seems to be very healthy after battling injuries seemingly his whole career. We are loaded at CB/Nickel. The DL is a work in progress, the kid from Clemson, Pagano, has narrowed his choices to Oregon or ND. The guru's say that he is the most important recruit out there for the Irish, he would be the piece of the puzzle that could transform the Irish DL. Irish Kool Aide....drink it by the gallon!
Well Corey Holmes a WR who in Dec announced he would transfer after graduating in May 2017, will be transferring to Purdue. He was a pretty well thought of WR coming out of HS in Florida but never found his spot at ND. I think most people figured he'd end up at one of the programs in Fla. Good luck to him, new guy at Purdue is likely to have a high powered passing offense and they'll need WR's. He has to be a pretty smart and focused kid to have arrived at ND in 2014 and be graduating in Aug 2017. Means he took care of business in the classroom and was focused enough to take full advantage of summer classes as well. Even if his final year doesn't lead to a NFL career he has his ND degree and will be part way to a Masters Degree. So he's likely to be a success in life, I hope he does well at Purdue.
I keep reading good things about WR Chase Claypool and WR Myles Boykin along with St. Brown. We are going to have big recievers this year if those guys are the primary targets along with Alize Jones and the renewed, healthy Durham Smythe. All of those guys are getting praise from the staff. You wonder if the smurfs, CJ Sanders and Chris Finke will even see the field on offense. OL just love what i'm reading, RB's also just nothing but good stuff. The offense with the new OCoord should be a very good offense. But we were pretty good on offense last year as well, but redzone issues kept us from winning. Hopefully with a seasoned OL, great talent at RB and Wimbush we'll do a lot more TD's and a lot less FG's. Speaking of FG's...Yoon is still rehabbing his foot (?). Hopefully he'll be ready in the fall. He won't have KO duties this year, they brought in another kid to do that and take some pressure off of him. Still lots of things up in the air, DB's and OL...LB's seems very solid and set. It will be a huge boost if the kid who's doing the graduate transfer from Clemson decides on the Irish. He'll be an immediate starter. I keep reading that we need Cage to be 100%, but I do worry that depending on a guy who's had a history of concussions and who's not played a lot since they came up last year is worrying to me (probably to Cage as well). Recruiting seems to be going well. No new names recently though.
ND <t>The offense does seems to keep coming on the offense. I know I'll be disappointed again but I can't help but look forward to the Blue/Gold game.</t>
It's hard to believe that anyone can kick a football 5-7 times a game and be considered over worked. Is he made of crepe paper?
Kickers do get hurt, not often in a game but they do get muscle issues and stuff like that. Kind of like how does a golfer get hurt playing golf. I hope he's good to go in the fall. He had a good but not great year last year as a freshmen he was money it seemed. Missed some easy FG's and some XP's if I remember. Our punter Tyler Newsome had some great punts and has a good average, but he was a little prone to the shanks. I'm hoping that Pollian and he can work on hang time and net punting. It's great to see a Punter sail one way down field but if the guy runs it back 25 yards or more then it really wasn't a great punt...out kicked his coverage. Also I see that Kelly got himself in a bit of a pickle for his comments on Kizer the other day. He said he should have stayed in school for another year, now that is pretty much what McShay and Kiper and other gurus have said as well, but Kelly should have left that alone and just said supportive stuff, like how much potential he has in the NFL. He did say that in one of his press conferences this spring when asked, he said something to the effect that Kizers upside made him the best QB in the draft. Truthfully, while I liked Kizer a lot as a QB and I can't really put the blame on him for the 4-8 season, he didn't play as well though as he did in 2015. Now to be fair he didn't have the experience at WR either and he didn't have Alize Jones and he didn't have a healthy Josh Adams most of the year and Folston was never the same player plus the OL underachieved quite a bit, how many plays were negated by McFlinchy? But I'm not sorry we don't have a QB controversy trying to figure out how to give both Kizer and Wimbush playing time. I like what I'm hearing about Wimbush a lot both from a talent and leadership perspective.
Here's a link to a good recap of the Kelly comments on Kizer. http://irish.nbcsports.com/2017/04/04/kelly-on-kizer-hes-got-all-the-tools-he-needs-more-football/ Mostly Kelly is in this position because he's a 4-8 coach.
At this point in time of the relationship, we just have to accept the fact that Kelly is going to say some stupid ****. We've tolerated it for a long time and I don't see him becoming any more polished with the passage of time.
Matt Freeman of Irish Sports Daily is reporting that Scott Pagano the Clemson DL who has been visiting around the country in anticipation of a Graduate Transfer, has visited ND, OU and will visit Oregon...has an 4th school he is now considering. Clemson. Yup....he might just stick at Clemson.
I don't watch much Hockey but even I could see that Denver was a really good team, they beat us to every puck ( or it seemed like it). But making the Frozen Four is still a pretty darn good season. Good News/Bad News. Bonzi is returning for his final year! Actually I would have been shocked if he had not come back, his family is not one that is in financial straits and he just seems to be the type that would want to be a Sr. Leader on the team. Also it's unlikely that he would even be drafted. One thing I've read that people hope doesn't happen is that he tries to change his game to be more NBA draft friendly. Apparently a lot of people thought that Jack Cooley did just that his last year, that the NBA evaluation was that he had to expand his game and be more of a outside scorer. Cooley made his bones on the inside, but his last year he wandered outside trying to prove he could be that type of player and it didn't help the team. Bad News: Ali Patberg who had a terrific HS career and much was expected of her at ND, is transferring . She blew out her knee in the pre-season as a freshman and missed the whole year, then this past fall something else happened, I forget what, that set her back a little and then she got sick and it basically torpedoed her Soph year as well. She did play but not very much and not esp well either. Muffet is bringing in a Grad transfer who plays Ali's position and there are some hotshot kids coming in behind her. So I guess it's not surprising that someone who had such a bright future doesn't want to languish on the bench or be a role player. So good luck to her and I hope she gets 100% healthy and gets her game back to where it once was. Bad News2 : Erin Boley who had a very solid freshman year and played a significant role and was probably going to be a starter or if not a starter get a lot playing time off the bench is also leaving. This one is a puzzler, I guess in the end she just didn't like the program, didn't really like Notre Dame. Rumors are that she's headed for Louisville.
One of the things I am excited about for 2017 is I think this is going to be the best leadership group since Manti's Sr. Year. I have always liked Drew Tranquil a lot, he's had an up and down career due to knee injuries. I'm hoping he's 100% and the move to Rover allows him to finish his career strong. I also think he's got a lot of potential in that leadership group. Here's a quote from him in a ISD pay article.