Baseball team has not been good this year, ACC is a much better baseball conference than the old Big East. Biggio's youngest son, Cavan, was the top high school player in Houston and was a likely 1st round MLB draft choice except that everybody knew that he was going to ND no matter what. The ND coach, Aoki, is in his 4th year and we are still floundering as a team and ND baseball fans are getting restless.
Some things that I am consistently reading. 1. Folston and Bryant are both having great springs at RB. 2. Amir Carlisle and C.J. Proisse are having great springs at Slot. We didn't throw much to the slot last year, that is probably going to change with these two guys. 3. All the other WR's are looking good as well, the Robinson kid continues to show incredible ball skills. 4. Duncan Smythe seems to be really ready to play and Heuerman seems to be not ready to play at TE. 5. Everybody continues to worry about the front 7, esp the DL and Inside backers. Jaylon Smith not a worry. It's too bad that Nyles Morgan was not an early entry. 6. Golson settling in well, Zaire showing a lot of confidence and running skills but not a very accurate passer. Hopefully the new QB Coach will help him develope in that area.
Brad Culpeppers son is visiting ND this Spring. He's a 2016 QB, his dad was an AA at Fla and played 10 years in the NFL. According to the story I read not only does he have his father's competitiveness but his Mom was a finalist on the Survivor! I've also read that Bishop Luers in Ft. Wayne has a young QB on the rise, in Noah Wezensky. Sid's old rival. I listened to Barnett last night on Mike Franks Power Hour, kid sounds like he's got a good head on his shoulders.
If the Irish don't average at least 35-38 ppg this season there is something very wrong. Loaded with weapons at every single position and a great kicker. Defense has a lot of talent as well but Diaco's system required players to think way too much which slowed them down. If Van Gorder can simplify things and accentuate the athletic abilities of his players they should be good as well. And then we come to special teams.....
ND <t>The Irish pick up two records in the last 3 or so days. Both from Texas. A WR and DB. Both 3 stars but both have offers from big programs. I'm guessing somebody knows something huh?</t>
Lost out on the kid from Indiana, Barajas, who gave his verbal to Penn State. The two kids from Texas are both good players, and did have some good offers. The Clark kid from the North East who out of the blue gave a verbal to UNC, after he'd said all sorts of great things about ND and how his family loved us and stuff like that....well he came to visit and left saying we were in his final 4 now with UNC, Mich, and Ohio State. Don't you just love recruiting? UNC people have to be going....what?
ND <r>Terry,<br/> <br/> <br/> <QUOTE><s> </e></QUOTE> Yeah, I think I've learned to keep it much more in perspective after all these years. They are all too young for us to take what that say during the recruiting process to the bank. I think they really believe what they say when they say it but until signing day lot of things and people can get them to change their minds. you just take what they say with a grain of salt and wait until signing day to see who you really end up with.</r>
Big game tonight for the Irish women. Baylor, who we are 0-4 against, in Purcell Pavillion tonight. Go Irish! Baylor PG Odessy Sims is probably the top PG in the country and a big time scorer...Irish will need to shut her down.
ND <r>kp,<br/> <QUOTE><s> </e></QUOTE> I know but we gotta do something to pass the time until football season starts.</r>
Irish Women back in the Final Four. Natalie Achonwa was injured late in the game, if she's not 100% for the Final Four a tall task just got harder. We are not a big team inside, and UConn is a big team inside...without Natalie it will be very tough to beat them, if both of us get to the National Final.
Without 6' 8" Griner Baylor got rolled by the Irish. Apparently the Baylor coach felt she owned the Irish. You just knew she was going to get T'd up.
Well Mulkey is not my favorite coach for sure, she is way overly dramatic on the sidelines and probably should get more T's and even tossed from games with all the antics she pulls. But credit to her for losing 4 starters including Griner of course and still making it back to the elite 8. Sims in a great PG and really carried their team. ND will lose some great players after this year, but McGraw has recruited well and I expect we'll be a very good team again next year.
Really bad news, Natalie Anchowa, our Sr. center and one of the leaders of the team is done for the year. She tore her ACL last night vs Baylor and is done. Really going to be tough to win without her, she was really a huge part of this years success. Tough way to end your career. Good luck though to her I'm sure she'll be a success in life.
Interesting interview of new QB coach Matt LeFleur by Eric Hansen in the Trib. He pretty much said Golson is #1, if you remember Malik Zaire said recently he expected to be the starter vs Rice. The other thing he mentioned was about Golsons grip on the football. It's well known that in 2012 Golson did not grip the ball on the laces, somewhat unusual. Well when he was in Calif training with QB guru George Whitfield that was one of the things that Whitfield was correcting, getting him to grip the laces. I wondered if he'd be able to make that switch, after all he's been griping the football one way his whole career and he has dazzling numbers as a HS QB and did pretty well in his one season at ND. LeFleur commented that he's still falling back to griping the old way. I'll bet that in games he'll do what comes naturally to him.