Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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12 AUGUST 2024 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME NUMBERS AND QUOTES PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS 1st Notre Dame men's lacrosse player in program history to win the Tewaaraton Award — which goes to the nation's top player — was graduate student attackman PAT KAVANAGH. He beat out his teammate, graduate student goalie Liam Entenmann, as well as Yale senior attackman Matt Brandau, Duke senior attackman Brennan O'Neill and Virginia graduate student attackman Connor Shellenberger to take home the 2024 award. Kavanagh, who was also a Tewaaraton finalist in 2021 and 2023, finished with 80 points — second on the team to his brother, Chris Kavanagh, with 81 — including an NCAA Tournament program-record 6 assists in a 15-5 win over Maryland in the national championship game. He concluded his career with a school-record 300 points. In July, Kavanagh was named the ACC Male Athlete of the Year. He is the first Irish student-athlete to achieve that honor and just the third men's lacrosse player to be selected in the award's history, which began in 1954. 16 Perfect scores for Notre Dame athletic teams in the latest release of Aca- demic Progress Rating (APR) statistics from the NCAA. That led the way for all Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools and marked the ninth time in the 18-year history of the APR in which at least 13 Irish teams had scored perfectly (2006, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). Notre Dame's number of perfect team scores has ranked either first or second among all FBS programs for 18 consecutive years. Absolutely. Absolutely. Not to be cocky, but we have a lot of talent. Women's basketball in general has a lot of talent. You can find it all over. But we have a lot of injuries coming back and transfers, especially players like Olivia Miles coming back. A lot of people might have forgotten, but she's going to come back and shock the world with the talent she has. Emma Risch, Cassandre Prosper. We just have so much firepower coming back. It's going to be exciting." — Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo on whether the Irish can win a national championship next season 8 Top-25 national recruits landed by Notre Dame women's bas- ketball head coach Niele Ivey in the 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 recruiting classes (all eight she signed), with the latest be- ing 6-foot-2 forward Leah Macy. The other seven are: Olivia Miles (No. 8 in 2021), Sonia Citron (No. 16 in 2021), KK Bransford (No. 25 in 2022), Hannah Hidalgo (No. 5 in 2023), Cassandre Prosper (No. 16 in 2023), Emma Risch (No. 20 in 2023) and Kate Koval (No. 5 in 2024). ESPN HoopGurlz has Macy ranked No.14 overall after she produced 24.9 points and 13.9 rebounds per game while shooting 67.3 percent from the floor as a junior at Bardstown (Ky.) Bethlehem High School. Undefeated is definitely on the ta- ble. Is it easy? No. No undefeated season is ever easy, no matter what the schedule looks like. But this particular Notre Dame schedule does look like it is workable. This Notre Dame schedule looks like you can navigate it." — Andy Staples of On3 15.8 Percent of the time during the ESPN Football Power Index's 20,000 simulations this summer, Notre Dame went 12-0. That was the best in the country, with Oregon coming in a close second at 15.7 percent. Georgia was next at 10.8 percent, followed by Ohio State at 7.5 percent, Penn State at 7.1 percent, Texas at 6.8 percent and James Madison at 3.9 percent. 1 Men's lacrosse team since the beginning of the NCAA's record keeping (1996 season) to finish the season ranked first in both scoring offense and defense. The Fighting Irish outscored their opponents 15.65-8.94 en route to winning their second con- secutive national crown. He became one of the best players in the world, just through hard work, dedication and perseverance. I'm proud of him. My best friend for life, and we did it." — Junior attackman Chris Kavanagh on his brother Pat after they helped lead Notre Dame to its second straight men's lacrosse national title