Great news! Looking forward to taking down the Caines again! Catholics vs Convicts. GO IRISH!!!

Just wish Tony an Tom could call it !!

Regardless of where it is at on the board, congratulations to the Women’s Soccer team on bringing ND another National Championship. With three NC’s, doesn’t that rank them the second most successful program at ND, or does the Fencing team have more?

And obviously, congratulations to the Football team for coming back from the dead just a month ago, and putting together a great November run (something we haven’t seen in a while).

Go Irish! Beat the Canes!

I had hoped against hope that the Irish would play in the Holiday Bowl. Oh, well…

As for lady’s soccer, congratulations! A national championship of any kind is a huge deal. When I visited ND for the first time in September and attended the women’s volleyball game against West VA (it was included in admission to the pep rally), I was struck that the team was introduced with the same fanfare as the football team: “HERE COME THE IRISH!” I came away believing that all ND teams are introduced in that way. If I am correct, it means that the university is impressing upon all its athletes, and by extension upon all its students that they represent a great university. This is extraordinary. I certainly love and admire the schools from which I have earned degrees, but you do not receive that kind of message at Claremont, UCLA and San Diego State.

I suspect that many ND Nation readers are, like me, subway alumni who are devotees of the football program, while perhaps (again like me) they maintain loyalties to other schools for other sports. All the same, the focus by we readers on football obscures the fact that there is an opportunity here. Notre Dame IS a great university, and it would behoove ND Nation to impress upon those of us who do not follow its other sports what accomplishments those teams have achieved.

thats awesome for the ladies soccer team but I dont type in ndnation.com to see the lady soccer articles. Im glad the irish are playing Miami. If we can beat Miami it should help us with some recruits in Florida.

Hats off to the ladies soccer team! What a GREAT win/year!

As for the Sun Bowl, I think this is a great (fair) match up. In the past,
ND was selected to bowl games they didn’t earn (1994 Fiesta Bowl). Living
in San Diego I was hoping for the Holiday Bowl, but Miami is probably a
better match up than Nebraska (this year).(I wish Boise St. was playing
Nebraska, Michigan, or Ohio St..)

Go Irish BEAT the Canes!

P.S. After USC, there is no team I want to beat more than Miami. I still recall
the beating we got in 1985. Don’t worry about 2012, BEAT Miami NOW!

Teams I want to beat the most:
1) USC
2) Miami
3) Michigan
4) Boston College
5) Nebraska
6) Ohio St.
7) Texas
8) Alabama
9) Oklahoma
10) Michigan St.

Yes…this is a football mesasge board, and I was at the 85′ ND Miami game as well as 87…we got our ASS kicked..I will never forget. Time to start a new rivalry. As for the womens soccer team….congratulations to those ladies. They got rid of NC and won it all.

’89 grad here. Womens soccer was a club sport until my senior year so their nat’l champ accomplishment this year is really outstanding! Congrats to them! Complainers turn off your hate for the holiday season.

Luv the mention of the #1 glowing atop Grace. My husband made that for NDs ’88 nat’l football championship..glad to hear it’s still glowing. We hv picture of it signed by none other than the great Lou..luv him!

I despise Miami more than any other..GO IRISH!!!!

While I am very excited about this match up, it makes me nervous as a whore in church. Coach Kelly is obviously a very sound “teacher” of the game. You can certainly see the development of most of the individuals on the team. The young kids are improving week to week and the Juniors and Seniors, for the most part, are playing better than under Charlie. The knock on Charlie, at least in my opinion, was his lack of teaching the techniques of the game, position by position. This would cost us late in the season almost every year.

Coach Kelly, to his credit, has vastly improved our defense as the year has evolved and has really done an outstanding job “teaching” the kids the techniques within the game to individually win battles on the field. He has done this with a freshman QB filling in for an injured starter, back up RB’s, his All-American TE out and stud NG on the sidelines!!! And yet, our offensive numbers have improved in the second half of the year and so have the defensive numbers. Especially linebacker play and corner play. Gary Gray is developing rapidly into a Todd Lyte type cover corner. Not only does he blanket people, but he might be one of the best tacklers on the team outside Manti. For all this I commend Coach Kelly on his efforts, organizational skills and his ability to “teach” the game.

The trouble is, he has got into his own way too often during games. He is so blindly committed to the spread offense, that it has cost him in some games. There is something to be said about exploiting match ups that are in your advantage in the game. But when you throw the ball 70% of the time, especially in a quick three step drop or shotgun, plant your foot and throw offense, at least throw it down the field!!! Too many short passes bunch up the D like in the USC game. We could have throttled USC, but we refused to run the ball in the second half until the last drive of the game. USC batted balls and hit players who caught balls immediately! Usually after very short gains. If your gonna throw it for 3 or 4 yards…..run it for that!!!!!!! Your line is firing out and attacking, not stepping backwards and reacting to pass rush or burying their heads in D line groins to keep hands down at the line of scrimmage.

We threw the ball 54 times against Tulsa, in a game we couldn’t afford to lose. And here’s the thing…..we did that with a freshman in the game that didn’t prepare for that game as Dayne went down in the early part of the first half. We had a 9 point lead with under a minute to go in the half and he had that kid throwing it all over the place. Then comes the pick 6(opps). Then at the end of the game he calls a pass play from the 18 yard line with less than a minute left when a field goal wins it and our kicker hasn’t missed a field goal since he earned the starting spot the previous year??? In the Michigan game, if you take the 3 on the last play of the half, we are kicking a field goal from 46 yards out to win the game instead of lobbing it into the endzone on a prayer that wasn’t answered. You have to take the 3 in that spot to go into the locker room down 21-10 with a little something to hang your hat on and the fact that you don’t know if your starter will be back in the second half???

My point is this. He threw the ball a combined 40 times against Utah and Army after that Tulsa debacle. We out rushed Army who ranked 8th in rushing offense in the country and actually won the time of possession for the first time all year in that game. This shows me that he adjusted, learned from the Tulsa game and focused on mixing in more run to help his young QB with play action, time of possession and leaning more on his defense. All of these things are very good signs in my opinion.

But, running the ball only twice in the 3rd quarter at USC with a freshman QB far from home in a hostile environment and playing in a steady rain while having a 10 point lead just about drove me nuts. We have to run the ball more in that spot!!!!! We played into USC’s hands for most of that second half. We let them crowd the box and continue to pressure our insignificant, short passing game. Coach Kelly almost cost the team, who was playing defense as well as any game this year a chance to even be in this bowl game. I hope he learned from that experience as I believe he did from the Tulsa game. This time, don’t forget about the combination of the spread attack, balanced with at least a 40% commitment to the run and I think ND can take the Canes. If we come out and try to employ a Tulsa or USC type of offense against a very quick, athletic Canes D, we will not have a very fun New Year’s Eve.

I hope for the best. Hopefully, Coach Kelly plays a little more “impose your will” kind of offense mixed with his spread philosophies in the bowl game and more importantly, in the years to come.