Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM NOV. 26, 2022 9 UNDER THE DOME 1st Career ACC Player of the Week honor for Notre Dame graduate student NATE LASZEWSKI Nov. 14. The 6-foot-10 forward out of Jupi- ter, Fla., averaged 21.0 points and 11.0 rebounds while posting two double-doubles in wins over Radford and Youngstown State to open the 2022-23 season. Laszewski tied his career high with 28 points in the 79-76 victory over Radford, scoring 10 of the team's final 15 points to clinch the win. He also reeled in 12 boards and dished out 3 assists. A few days later against Youngstown State he compiled 14 points and 10 boards. Prior to this season, Laszewski had 9 career double-doubles. 2 Notre Dame players — junior tight end Michael Mayer and sophomore left tackle Joe Alt — were considered to be the most valuable players at their respective positions per Pro Football Focus, which developed a metric to determine a player's value called Wins Above Average (WAA) for college football. Through Week 11, Mayer boasted the third-best overall grade (90.7), third-best receiving grade (89.9) and seventh-best run- blocking grade (79.1) among tight ends in 2022. Alt's 91.4 grade was the highest among all Power Five tackles, while his 90.6 run-blocking grade was the second highest among FBS offensive tackles. He also had allowed only a 1.4 percent pressure rate this season, the third-lowest mark at the position. 5th Was where ESPN HoopGurlz's slotted Notre Dame in its class of 2023 women's basketball team rankings following the early signing period in mid-November. The Fighting Irish reeled in three five-star recruits — guards Emma Risch and Hannah Hi- dalgo, and forward Cassandre Prosper — to go from unranked to their current lofty ranking. "Hidalgo is a shifty, speedy and aggressive lead guard whose game grew tremendously over the past year. She added consistency from three, which made her really tough to cover. She is a relentless defender, especially when pressuring the ball. No. 16 Cassandre Prosper was one of the hottest recruits of the summer, as she led her Canadian U17 National Team. She is a smooth, versatile forward who likes to attack from the wing and high-post areas and does a good job on the glass. No. 20 Emma Risch is a stock-rising sharpshooter with a great feel for the game. She is poised and patient, and she makes others better." 7 Football Bowl Subdivision programs had multiple wins over teams that appeared in the College Football Playoff rankings released Nov. 15: Notre Dame, Tennessee, Ohio State, UCLA, Georgia, LSU and Clemson. All of them had two such wins, with the exception of Tennessee, which had three. The Irish defeated No. 9 Clemson Nov. 5 and No. 13 North Carolina 45-32 Sept. 24. 10 Times in Notre Dame's 134 years of football it has scored 35 or more points in four consecutive games, with the 2022 squad joining that exclusive list this year. From Oct. 22 to Nov. 12, the Irish totaled 44 vs. UNLV, 41 at Syra- cuse, 35 against Clemson and 35 vs. Navy. Notre Dame will have a chance to join an even more exclusive club if they can keep the streak going against Boston College Nov. 19. The Irish have scored 35 points in five straight games only once — in 1943 — and have never done it six times in a single season. 13 Contested catches by Michael Mayer through Week 11, per PFF. No other tight end in the country had more than 9. 25 Members of the football team were honored in what is expected to be their final home game in a Notre Dame uniform prior to the matchup against Boston College Nov. 19. The school did not release a detailed list of those 25 players in advance of the game but noted that the group of 25 included 16 g r a d u a t e s t u - dents and repre- sented 12 differ- ent states and one foreign country — se- nior linebacker Christian Opperman, who hails from Pretoria, South Africa. (Check out the next edition of Blue & Gold Il- lustrated for a detailed look at who was honored on Senior Day.) ✦ BY THE NUMBERS PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER