No. 10 Notre Dame shooting for ACC, national titles in 2020

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Most sea­sons at Notre Dame, expec­ta­tions include ques­tions about con­tend­ing for a cham­pi­onship. This year, there are ques­tions about two.

One of the most unusu­al sea­sons in the his­to­ry of col­lege sports is about to begin and it includes a pan­dem­ic-prompt­ed wrin­kle for the 10th-ranked Fight­ing Irish: They are tak­ing a one-year sab­bat­i­cal from their trea­sured inde­pen­dence to join the Atlantic Coast Con­fer­ence race, a step that guar­an­teed Notre Dame a slate of oppo­nents when dozens of pro­grams aren’t play­ing at all.

Notre Dame opens the sea­son Sept. 12 at home against Duke.

“I know our play­ers are excit­ed about play­ing for a con­fer­ence cham­pi­onship,” said coach Bri­an Kel­ly, now in his 11th sea­son at Notre Dame.

Those odds could be long. Indeed, they might need to beat No. 1 Clem­son twice – on Nov. 7 in Notre Dame Sta­di­um and in the ACC cham­pi­onship game in Decem­ber – to even receive a Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off berth and pos­si­bly three times to break their 32-year nation­al title curse.

Kelly’s tenure ties him with Hall of Fame pre­de­ces­sors Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghi­an and Lou Holtz, all just two years behind Knute Rockne. The oth­er four have nation­al cham­pi­onships on their resumes and stat­ues in their hon­or out­side the house that Rockne built.

Notre Dame’s last nation­al cham­pi­onship came in 1988 under Holtz, and Kelly’s Irish have come up emp­ty against the dom­i­nant teams of the last decade (Alaba­ma and Clemson).

Notre Dame will have an expe­ri­enced quar­ter­back under cen­ter in Ian Book, who has thrown for 6,118 yards and 57 touch­downs, rushed for anoth­er 1,033 yards and eight scores, and is 20–3 as a starter enter­ing his fifth season.

Book will have a vet­er­an offen­sive line in front of him along with junior tight end Tom­my Trem­ble, speedy out­side receivers Braden Lenzy and Lawrence Keys III and grad trans­fer Ben Skowronek. Senior Jafar Arm­strong returns to a crowd­ed back­field after two injury-plagued seasons.

“There’s noth­ing bet­ter than putting in that work and work­ing on chem­istry,” Book said.

Kel­ly said he has seen growth in the 6‑foot, 208-pound Book since quar­ter­backs coach Tom Rees became the team’s new offen­sive coor­di­na­tor pri­or to the team’s 33–9 bowl vic­to­ry over Iowa State.

“He’s devel­oped a sin­gle-mind­ed focus in terms of what he wants this team to accom­plish,” Kel­ly said. “It’s a cham­pi­onship or bust.”

In this bizarre sea­son, make that two championships.

STRENGTH UP FRONT

Left tack­le Liam Eichen­berg heads a vet­er­an offen­sive front for line coach Jeff Quinn and is pro­ject­ed to be the next Irish line­man to go in the NFL draft’s first round.

“It’s some­thing we take pride in,” said the 6‑foot‑6, 305-pound Eichen­berg, who is joined on the line by left guard Aaron Banks, cen­ter Jar­rett Pat­ter­son, right guard Tom­my Krae­mer and right tack­le Robert Hain­sey. Pat­ter­son is a junior and the oth­ers are seniors are grad­u­ate students.

DEFENSE RISING

Clark Lea, the 38-year-old defen­sive coor­di­na­tor, could be a head coach-in-wait­ing. Last sea­son, his 4–2‑5 defense fin­ished 12th in scor­ing (17.9 points allowed per game) and 18th in total yardage (321.6 allowed).

Despite los­ing sev­en play­ers with start­ing expe­ri­ence to the NFL, an abun­dance of tal­ent returns in line­men Daelin Hayes, Myron Tago­v­ailoa-Amosa, Kurt Hin­ish and Adetokun­bo Ogun­de­ji; line­backer Drew White; rover Jere­mi­ah Owusu-Koramoah, and sec­ondary stal­warts Kyle Hamil­ton, TaRiq Bra­cy and Shaun Craw­ford, back for a sixth year.

NEW FACES, (SOME) NEW PLACES

Two fresh­men tight ends in Michael May­er and Kevin Bau­man will add depth and ease the loss of Cole Kmet to the NFL. True fresh­man Chris Tyree and red­shirt fresh­man Kyren Will­liams have impressed at run­ning back. Two oth­er trans­fers – cor­ner Nick McCloud (N.C. State) and safe­ty Isa­iah Pry­or (Ohio State) – are expect­ed to see exten­sive play­ing time.

VIRUS UPDATE

Notre Dame began fall class­es Aug. 10 and saw a spike in COVID-19 pos­i­tive tests that forced Pres­i­dent Rev. John Jenk­ins to shut down in-per­son class­es begin­ning Aug. 19. Because of the spike, the Irish did not resume prac­tice until Aug. 23. Since begin­ning test­ing June 18, the staff and play­ers have under­gone more than 1,000 tests with 11 pos­i­tive cases..

SCHEDULE SCRAMBLE

For the first time since 1927, Navy is not on the sched­ule as Notre Dame went with a slate of 10 ACC games and one non-con­fer­ence matchup, against South Flori­da on Sept. 19. The Irish could face Book’s for­mer back­up ‚Phil Jurkovec, when they vis­it Boston Col­lege on Nov. 14.

(Vis­it­ed 1 times, 1 vis­its today)



Tags: design TT Mod­ell­bahn TT H0 N schal­ten mod­elleisen­bahn bahn spiele­max preise 

Ein Reichsmarschall von Adolf Hitler hatte auch Märklin Modelleisenbahn Modelle > read more

Schreibe einen Kommentar