As Tim noted the Irish will be starting Spring Practice soon, a lot of questions will need to be answered starting with how ready to be QB1 is Tyler Buchner. Loss of Jarrett Patterson is a big setback for the OL, it does open the door for somebody like Pat Coogan a promising freshman Center to get more of a look from HH. It will mean though that HH will need to make some decisions on who else to play at Center this spring. Zeke Correll who started quite a few games in 2020 at Center when Patterson injured his foot is likely to get a lot of reps now. What about Kristofic? Also what about Josh Lugg, talk is that he'll move to RG. Rocco Spindler? He was highly rated/sought after as a recruit, is he ready? There are a lot of bodies for HH to work with though and the return of Blake Fisher to 100% means there will be a decision on who will play LT, Joe Alt who did a great job once he was given the job or Fisher who was so impressive as a true frosh he won the job and greatness is predicted for him. But while we wait on Spring Practice there is still a bit of the basketball season to sort through. The Ladies are definitely in the tournament and I am hopeful that they can make a Sweet 16 run. The men are right on the edege even with the 2nd place finish in the ACC regular season, and it turns out they played Va.Tech much better than UNC did last night. So while it's not a slam dunk, I'm hopeful we make the Tournament and get a 1st round win. Doubtful we can make a Sweet 16 run IMHO. Hockey is in Ann Arbor tonight to play UM in the Big 10 Semi-Finals. We are 4-0 against them this year, most think that they are the better club though. So we shall see. Baseball is off to a great start and Conference play will be starting ACC this weekend. They beat NCState last night, today's game is cancelled though due to weather, we'll have to see about Sunday. But we're a top 10 team right now.
Michigan finally got a win against the Irish Hockey, 2-1 in Ann Arbor. It's best of 3,so tomorrow is win or go home for the Irish.
Irish Baseball sweeps NC State with 11-4 win in South Bend. For some reason I thought the semifinal against Michigan in Hockey was a best of 3,but it wasn't. So Michigan advances to play the Gophers. I didn't realize how much talent UM had, according to what I read on ND Nation they have 7 1st round NHL draft picks. That's a lot of talent!
Irish women are #5 seed in the Bridgeport region vs UMass. If they win they likely have to face Oklahoma to make it to the sweet 16.
ND baseball is ranked #1 in two polls, Baseball America and Perfect Game. I know there are a bunch of college baseball polls but it's nice to be ranked #1 by two of them. It's early in the season, but we're off to a good start.
Sid, Jarrett is off to a really good start in his ND Career. Of course, the key will be to do the things necessary to make him want to stay for a long time. They gave him a salary boost and some improvements to facilities, hopefully they will listen to him when he says he needs something to enhance the programs' ability to recruit and compete with the top programs. I doubt if we'll ever be able to have a situation like a number of SEC Schools, where they have stadiums that seat 10K+ and fill them up. But we can do a lot of things that don't involve a 10K stadium to make the job one that he wants to stay at for a long time. The stadium we have could be improved, Rice has a very nice stadium and it's not 10K but it's a great venue to watch baseball. We need something like that.
Also it would be nice is ND Baseball had a NIL Collective that got deals for the kids that covered all of the Tuition/Room/Board that their "partial" scholarships didn't cover plus a little extra for their pockets. I think we need to get you working on that!
Terry, I'm thinking of making the 2.5 hour drive north this spring to take in a couple of games, but I'm concerned about going all that way only to find the games are sold out. I may have to ask if I can buy tickets in advance.
Even though The Eck only seats 2500, I am not sure it sells out very often but it would great if as part of the programs growth that we start having regular sellouts!
Rutgers out playing us and up 5 at the half. One of their players already has his season high in the first half. Ron Harper Jr has been great as well. We are scoring in the paint but cold from 3pt, and have missed all of our free throws. Need to figure out a better defense and shoot the 3 or we'll be going home.
We are going to double OT, could have won it in regulation if we just shoot our season avg from the foul line, then we miss some more FT in the first OT or we'd have won in the first OT. On to the 2nd OT
On to double OT. ND has done a great job attacking a great Rutgers defense. Missed FT are hurting the Irish along with some circus shots made by Rutgers.
Wow what a finish Ron Harper Jr hits an amazing 3pt to tie again, but we had the last shot, wild drive by Blake Wesley but Atkinson cleaned it up for the winner!
Re paint points-Rutgers got spread out by focusing on defending against the 3pt shot and ND carved them up inside. Also Rutgers usually gets a lot of turnovers but ND was exceptional in protecting the ball.
Rutgers McConnell and Harper hit some amazing 3 pointers tonight. When we win we usually hit a good number of three's and are a good FT shooting team. Tonight, as Bob said we took what they gave us and killed them on the inside.
I truly didn't think we could beat Rutgers with our typical live-and-die-by-the-three game. Our biggest weakness over the years has been the absence of a physical inside game. What I saw tonight was dominance in the paint. Who were these guys, and what did they do with the typical ND offense? We couldn't have picked a better time to undergo such a massive transformation against a normally stout defense.