Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1530074
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM DECEMBER 2024 11 UNDER THE DOME "A strange thing has happened with Notre Dame. Somehow, someway, the Fighting Irish are flying under the radar. While we all spent the last week argu- ing about one Indiana program, a different one has been tearing the competi- tion limb from limb, week after week, in a fashion similar to the Hoosiers' first nine games. … "The Northern Illinois loss is more than enough to justify skepticism. Inex- plicable bogies are not unprecedented under coach Marcus Freeman (see: Marshall, 2022), and this team's post-NIU schedule has also not tested them much outside of the Louisville game. Mix that with Notre Dame's past postsea- son letdowns and … you get it. What's going to happen when they play a team with an approximate level of talent in the postseason? The Irish have been flat embarrassed in their two appearances in the four-team iteration. "Freeman has been building the program for this. Is Notre Dame's dominance a product of its schedule, or has it turned the corner from a very good program to a true elite? The Irish are a win away from getting to prove that by exorcizing postseason demons." — Richard Johnson of CBS Sports "That leaves Notre Dame poised precariously on the brink of landing a home game for the playoff. The odds are still long that the Irish would be pushed beyond the top eight, but stranger things have happened. And it really shouldn't be a topic for debate. Notre Dame has six wins vs. opponents that are currently 7-4 or better — the most of any team in the country — and is riding a nine-game winning streak in which it outscored the opposition by an average of 33 points. "Of course, there's still that messy incident in Week 2 when the Irish fell to Northern Illinois. If those two played 100 more times, it would surprise no one if Notre Dame won 99 of them. But there's no ignoring what happened, and for as good as the Irish look today, they also have the worst loss of any playoff con- tender by a country mile. It sure would be a shame if that loss kept them from hosting a game in northern Indiana in mid-December." — David Hale of ESPN "The Fighting Irish have been among the nation's most dominant teams over the past two-plus months, dating back to that brutal loss to Northern Illinois. I've spilled a lot of ink here arguing that Notre Dame now is a very different team from the one we saw on that fateful September day — but I no longer need to make that case, because the selection committee agrees with me already. "Based on last week's rankings, the Irish would be hosting a first-round game. But they could and should slide up after yet another dominant win, this time coming at Army's expense. Over Notre Dame's nine-game winning streak, the Irish have outscored opponents, 399-92. Over the course of the entire season, the Irish now have the best point differential in FBS (+301). Notre Dame has an elite defense and a great rushing attack. "So many teams across college football have fluctuated week to week, lead- ing to some of the crazy upsets we've seen this fall. But Notre Dame has been a consistent and reliable team that, since the NIU loss, hasn't overlooked a single opponent. I trust the Irish." — Nicole Auerbach of NBC Sports "Entering the season, most analysts and onlookers pegged the national player of the year race as a two-way battle between UConn's Paige Bueckers, the 2021 winner, and [JuJu] Watkins, last season's freshman of the year. But when Notre Dame and USC faced off on [Nov. 23], [Hannah] Hidalgo was the best player on the floor. And she turned this debate into a three-player race. "The sophomore was a menace on both ends. … Her competitive edge — ap- parent not just in her play but also in her fiery celebrations after big moments — fuels a Notre Dame team that, because of injuries, is currently operating with a seven-player rotation. Having Olivia Miles in the backcourt means that Hidalgo doesn't have to do all the heavy lifting herself. It's a nightmare pairing for opposing defenses to guard, and also allows Hidalgo to exert herself even more defensively." — Alexa Philippou of ESPN "There's no other group of guys I'd rather be with than the guys in our locker room. We might not be as talented as some of the other teams out here but we are [for] sure just as tough. We are going to fight no matter what." — Notre Dame men's basketball head coach Micah Shrewsberry after his team's 85-84 loss to Rutgers Nov. 26 Irish On Social Media PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER THEY SAID IT THEY SAID IT "This isn't about remembering the pain or however [MARCUS] FREEMAN has described it before. It's about shoving that loss back in everyone's face by making it seem more bizarre by the week. The better Notre Dame plays, the more Northern Illinois feels like the ultimate anomaly. At the time of implosion, it seemed like the best case for Notre Dame was Northern Illinois running through the MAC. Turns out, the best case for Notre Dame was to play everyone else off the field. Don't let somebody else define the season. Do it yourself. … "The yield has been staggering since Northern Illinois, as Notre Dame has not only beaten all comers, but ground most into dust. The Irish have won their past nine games by a combined score of 392-99. That's an average margin of victory of 32.6 points, basically the kind of stuff peak Alabama, peak Ohio State or peak Georgia used to do." — Pete Sampson of The Athletic