Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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ND Sports guy on the mound," Aoki said. "That's not to take away from his other abilities. … We just thought he could establish himself on our pitching staff." He has. Norton(8-1 as a starter) won his first seven starts this season — the first Notre Dame pitcher to do that in 12 years. He kept his ERA below 2.00 during that stretch. It currently sits at 1.82 after his first loss in mid-April. Norton's fastball doesn't set radar guns on fire. His breaking ball is an ongoing project. Yet he's managed to mow down some of the country's topranked teams by nibbling corners and making opponents swing the bat. He helped launch Notre Dame to its highest national ranking in program history in early March when he threw a complete game shutout to beat No. 25 Virginia Tech. The Hokies normally average 8.3 runs per game and were hitting .337 as a team this season as of mid-April. He followed that performance a week later by frustrating rival USC for seven innings, allowing only one run on five hits in another victory. Those back-to-back outings earned him recognition as the College Sports Madness National Pitcher of the Week. "I wouldn't say that it was expected to go like this, but I can't say I'm disappointed about it," Norton said. "It's been really nice to have this success after working hard at it for so long." Norton batted .261 and started 31 games on the right side of the infield as a freshman. He took some time to adjust to a more full-time pitching role as a sophomore and made some headway last year as a starting pitcher. He led the team with 98 innings pitched and turned in a 5‑5 record with a 4.32 ERA. This season, Aoki said his unexpected ace has matured and developed a better understanding of how to harness his pinpoint accuracy to make quick work of opposing batters. In years past, Norton would get frustrated with pitches that barely missed the strike zone and force strikes over the plate where an opponent could tee off. Now, the senior isn't afraid of throwing a few more balls (he still had issued a remarkably low 10 walks in 65 innings), which force hitters to swing at pitches they don't want to. Norton's coaches say he wasn't a strikeout pitcher even in high school, when he went 9-0 to lead Andrean to a state championship as a senior. He instead relied on his superior command. "He's got a Greg Maddux-like brain where he knows what he's doing," Andrean coach Dave Pishkur said. "He's not going to walk guys and he's not going to get himself in trouble by having a high pitch count or anything like that." Norton's ability to keep his pitch count down helps Notre Dame even on days that he isn't on the mound. Most college teams start their most dominant pitchers on Friday of the typical threegame weekend series. Norton pitches on Saturdays. Aoki said he left Norton there because he can count on the veteran to give his bullpen a rest by going deep into a game and because he can have a big impact on the momentum of a weekend. "Winning that one allows us to