Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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14 MARCH 2020 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME The end of the NCAA fall sports cam- paign in the 2019-20 Division I Learfield IMG College Directors' Cup competition occurred with LSU defeating Clemson in the College Football Playoff. For the second year in a row, Notre Dame finished ninth in the fall standings by scoring 296.50 points in the first phase of the competition, with 157 different schools (including FCS football) tallying points. The second phase is the winter sports, and the third and final one is the spring competition. The 296.50 points from the fall — with 100 the maximum a team can score from a national title — came from four sports: • 70.5 points for a No. 8 finish in men's cross country at the NCAA Champion- ships. • 66 points for placing No. 11 in the coaches poll (No. 12 Associated Press) in football with an 11-2 record. The only schools in the Directors' Cup standings to place higher in football were Penn State and Wisconsin. • 60 points in women's cross country with a No. 15 placement at the NCAA Championships. • 50 points in women's soccer for ad- vancing to the second round of the NCAA Tournament before getting eliminated. • 25 points in men's soccer after getting eliminated in the first round of the NCAA Tournament under second-year head coach Chad Riley. • 25 points in women's volleyball, where it lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Notre Dame did not score last season in volleyball and women's soccer, but this year did in all six fall varsity sports it offers. It does not have other fall sports in- cluded such as field hockey or men's wa- ter polo, where Stanford received 100 points as the national champion and the University of Pacific 90 as the runner-up. Each school can count its top-scoring 19 sports toward the final point total, but four of the sports have to be base- ball, men's and women's basketball and volleyball. The competition began in 1994, and Stanford has captured the Cup every school year since 1995. The 15-team ACC, including Notre Dame, had tremendous representation with five schools among the top 11, eight in the top 15, and 10 among the first 27. Notre Dame had a school-record three consecutive top-10 overall finishes in 2013 (No. 9), 2014 (No. 3, the school's best showing ever) and 2015 (No. 10). Here is the top 10 from the fall 2019 competition: Rk. School Points 1. Stanford 594.50 2. Michigan 421.00 3. Washington 345.00 4. Wisconsin 338.00 5. BYU 326.00 6t. Virginia 312.00 6t. Penn State 312.00 8. Louisville 302.00 9. Notre Dame 296.50 10. North Carolina 235.00 — Lou Somogyi All six Irish fall sports teams scored points to help Notre Dame to a top-10 finish in the first phase of the Division I Learfield IMG College Directors' Cup competition. PHOTO BY JAMES GILBERT NOTRE DAME NO. 12 IN FINAL ASSOCIATED PRESS POLL The 2019 Fighting Irish finished No. 12 in the Associated Press poll with an 11-2 ledger. Despite winning their final five games by 31, 32, 33, 21 and 24 points in the 33-9 Camping World Bowl win versus Iowa State, head coach Brian Kelly's 10th edition at the school saw minimal movement in the poll following their 45-14 melt- down at Michigan Oct. 26. That fiasco dropped the Fighting Irish from No. 8 to No. 16 in the AP poll, and six straight wins thereafter — the longest winning streak by Notre Dame to end a season since the seven in a row in 1992 — moved them up only four spots at the end. Two factors likely contributed to this lack of movement. One, it didn't help that three of the four teams that finished just ahead of them — Alabama (11-2), Penn State (11-2) and Wisconsin (10-4) — all defeated the Wolverines. Two, the lack of marquee victories during the season, plus playing a 7-5 Iowa State team in the bowl, created a "meh" factor. Minnesota (11-2) finished in the AP top 10 for the first time since 1962 (and third time overall in the top 25 since then) on the strength of defeating the teams that finished No. 10 (Penn State) and No. 14 (Auburn), the latter in a bowl. For the second time in five years, Notre Dame's lone victory against a final top 25 team came against Navy. The 2015 Irish team that finished 10-3 and No. 11 recorded its lone win against a final AP top 25 team versus No. 19 and 11-2 Navy at home (41-24). This year it was versus the No. 20 and 11-2 Midshipmen (52-20), again at home. This is in contrast to defeating four teams in the final top 25 in 2017 and three in 2018. — Lou Somogyi FINAL 2019 AP POLL Rk. School Total Points 1. LSU (15-0) 1,550 2. Clemson (14-1) 1,487 3. Ohio State (13-1) 1,426 4. Georgia* (12-2) 1,336 5. Oregon (12-2) 1,249 6. Florida (11-2) 1,211 7. Oklahoma (12-2) 1,179 8. Alabama (11-2) 1,159 9. Penn State (11-2) 1,038 10. Minnesota (11-2) 952 11. Wisconsin (10-4) 883 12. Notre Dame (11-2) 879 13. Baylor (11-3) 827 14. Auburn (9-4) 726 15. Iowa (10-3) 699 16. Utah (11-3) 543 17. Memphis (12-2) 528 18. Michigan* (9-4) 468 19. Appalachian State (13-1) 466 20. Navy* (11-2) 415 21. Cincinnati (11-3) 343 22. Air Force (11-2) 209 23. Boise State (12-2) 188 24. UCF (10-3) 78 25. Texas (8-5) 69 * 2019 Notre Dame opponent NOTRE DAME FINISHES FALL NINTH IN FALL SPORTS COMPETITION