Rakes Report #247: In this time of introspection, on the eve of our selection, I say to my reflection, 'God please spare me more rejection' (The Army Review)

In a day of bicoastal domination, Notre Dame put on excellent performances that spanned from the Bronx to the heart of Los Angeles.

one of the cooler things you’ll ever see on a football field

~mandatory audio accompaniment~

1) Army had been a fun story this season but unfortunately for them the talent gap between the Black Knights and the Fighting Irish was as wide as expected. It’s one thing to execute a clean game plan and keep the ball away from the CUSA schools masquerading as American Athletic Conference foes but a completely different issue to deal with Jeremiyah Love being lightning personified, Rylie Mills’ dragging ballcarriers to the ground even when not fully vertical and Bryce Young being real, real tall. 

Eleven games down, only one to go. When Notre Dame lost in the second week of the season it was clear their only path to absolution and atonement was to not just win but to beat every remaining opponent with a giant sack of hammers. The schedule has not been the most strenuous but there’s been little drama over the last two-plus months and one thing good teams do is win comfortably over ones who are decent, poor and bad. It’s been a bit of a broken road, but we are on the precipice of the goal we established for this season. Let’s talk about the penultimate step to obtaining it.

2) A talent gap alone is not enough to prevail against a capable academy team if you don’t keep things tidy and Mike Denbrock had his unit humming. No turnovers, no sacks and while there weren’t many passing attempts in this game the scourge of drops we’ve been dealing with were not a factor. It’s hard to overstate what a bludgeoning this was: Just under 10 yards per play and a 98th percentile success rate. Notre Dame could do whatever they wanted and did so, peppering the cadets with explosive plays. 

What a joy to see Jeremiyah Love show out on a primetime stage like this, and it was a tough time for Army when Jadarian Price came in for relief and made them pay with a more violent form of speed. (Love has now tied the program record for consecutive games with a rushing touchdown and I would be a big fan of him breaking it this weekend.) Good offensive line effort after a dip last week. Riley Leonard completed 77% of his passes for over 11 yards per attempt which we will take every time out, thank you very much. It is not outside the realm of possibility he sets the program single-season records for both quarterback rushing touchdowns and completion percentage.

The Irish did not punt in this game, scoring touchdowns on four of their first five possessions. The lone miss was the failed fourth-and-goal try, but that was a reminder of why aggressiveness in that area is welcome. Army was pinned back and after a stop/poor punt combo the Irish only had to go 41 yards for a score. Denbrock and company faced third down only five times, which is silly. There were also only two plays in the fourth quarter: The 58-yard touchdown run from Aneyas Williams and a kneel down, leaving a comical time-of-possession gap of 866 seconds for the Black Knights to 34 for the Irish.

One note/nit for which I apologize bringing up so often:  I understand it’s a deep room with a lot of players contributing but I still don't understand why Jayden Thomas doesn't get more snaps. Exclusively good things seem to happen when he's involved but there must be something I am missing.

3) Stellar effort from Al Golden's crew, who held Army to three-and-outs on four of their first five drives. (They snuck a touchdown in between two pairs of punts, but it was an arduous 12-play effort.) Before the fourth quarter started, Army had converted only two third-/fourth-down conversions and was below 200 yards of offense.

It was fun to see Jack Kiser’s final game against the option include a tackle for loss on fourth down and a fumble recovery, and it was equally great to see young guns like Adon Shuler and Jaiden Ausberry (the team leaders in tackles, both setting new career highs) flying around out there. The water is about to get a lot deeper for Junior Tuihalamaka but he’s stepped up so capably with all the injuries along the defense line. After Christian Gray’s struggles against Navy, his post-bye week resurgence continues apace while Rylie Mills keeps excelling in the absence of Howard Cross. Army got snuffed out inside and when they tried to attack outside even the plays that looked like they had a chance would be corralled after four yards. Elite, elite performance.

What is it about Notre Dame that causes coaches to try and get their quarterbacks murdered? Bryson Daily spent the evening giving his all and being met with body blow after body blow from future NFL players so Jeff Monken rewarded him by keeping him out there for two pointless fourth-quarter drives despite the fact he recently missed a game. You can still win your conference and maybe go to the playoff! You still play Navy! What are you doing?! Strange stuff, but it’s a good sign for Notre Dame fans that a primary concern multiple times this season has been the welfare of opposing quarterbacks.

4) The kicking game, boy buddy, I don’t know. Do you think Marcus Freeman ran the ball on 3rd and 8 in the third quarter to try and get Mitch Jeter an easy one? Road to hell, good intentions, etc., etc. Did not work out but at the very least it remains such a disaster that Freeman, Denbrock and Leonard should be fully aligned that once the Irish offense crosses midfield you have two plays to convert every third down. It would be nice if the kicking game was functional but better we know it’s an issue now than have it pop up as a surprise at the Coliseum.

That was Bryce Young’s third block of the season, first on a punt. What a weapon. Jayden Harrison looked strong on his 30-yard kick return and it kindly set up Love’s 68-yard sprint on the ensuing snap. It rules to have two separate drives that go in the book as “One play, 50+ yard touchdown.”

Fashion corner: Uniforms were solid but the combination of gold sheen and gothic numbers meant it was very difficult to tell who anyone was. If you wondered why the stands looked a little empty at the beginning the answer is Yankee Stadium security sloth. Any inklings on what the Shamrock Series will be next season, if there is one?

5) Winning Is Hard Round Up: Last week there was a screaming match between SEC fans and Big Ten fans that went along the lines of “Indiana has benefited from an easy schedule and will be exposed the first time they play a real team” and “If your schools are so good how come they keep losing so many dang games?” Turns out both sides were correct! 

Indiana looked great to start against Ohio State but then got submarined, unable to muster anything against the Buckeye defense. Kurtis Rourke had eight completions and was sacked five times, numbers that are way too close for comfort. But despite the poor performance in Columbus, the rest of the day went just fine for the Hoosiers because the projected SEC at-large teams managed to embarrass themselves. Ole Miss moved the ball just fine in Gainesville, but empty red zone possessions and too many picks allowed the Gators to pull off the upset. That was not the worst road result by an SEC team because Alabama scored three (3) points against Oklahoma, which is under the mark of 14 set by Maine earlier this month. The Sooners won with 68 passing yards, but ran for 260 and added a pick six.

BYU and Colorado were set to play for a spot in the playoff but they lost at Arizona State and Kansas, respectively, so the Big 12 is a total mess after Iowa State was able to hold on against Utah. (Arizona State tried the “Run around and throw the ball real high” strategy and it almost cost them.) Penn State and Boise State were pushed to the limit by Minnesota and Wyoming but survived their trips beyond the wall. Texas A&M blew a late lead at Auburn before falling in quadruple overtime after the Tigers had blown a 21-0 lead of their own. (The two-point shootout is so, so stupid. Can you imagine if a playoff game comes down to such an unserious gimmick?) Georgia had trouble with UMass for far longer than you’d expect.

Rutgers gave up a 40-yard touchdown with four seconds left to lose to Illinois. Colorado State was undefeated in Mountain West play but fell behind 28-7 at Fresno State and couldn’t catch up. UCLA blew a fourth-quarter lead against USC and then became extra incompetent on offense. Virginia Tech lost at Duke to fall to 5-6. NC State lost a heartbreaker at Georgia Tech. Pitt got blown out by Louisville and have lost four straight after the 7-0 start. Oklahoma State lost at home to Texas Tech to fall to 0-8 in the Big 12. North Carolina was on a little win streak so of course they got crushed at Boston College. Nebraska destroyed Wisconsin to reach bowl eligibility — congrats to the Huskers. Wisconsin must defeat Minnesota to make one of their own.

6) We sometimes discuss the level of Must Win reached by the next game and there can be reasonable debate. When a victory means you are guaranteed to host one of the first playoff games ever in the history of FBS and create a frigid festival scene at Notre Dame Stadium, the need for a victory is rather high on any scale. The Trojans are 6-5 and playing for pride, the ruination of a rival’s season and reclaiming the jeweled shillelagh. This is as “Play loose and leave it all on the field because we’ve got nothing to lose” versus “All the pressure in the world” as it gets.

(Prior to the chaos of this weekend, I would have said a loss to the Trojans meant the Irish would have gone to the Pop-Tarts Bowl. I do think it’s possible that even at a despondent 10-2 Notre Dame could still sneak into the playoff because of the bloodletting that occurred behind them. I do not want this to happen but am simply noting it is a possibility when it was not 48 hours ago.)

Southern Cal has been snakebitten in fourth quarters all season but the bones remain relatively strong (their biggest loss was by seven points), which is why despite the disparity in records the spread is only a touchdown for the good guys. Woody Marks is a fine running back, and Jayden Maiava brings some more wrinkles to the ground game for Lincoln Riley to explore. They have a deep wide receiver room that may lack a clear-cut Tier One guy but there are plenty of talented options.

The defense is sturdy and competent, which sounds like damnation via faint praise for a program of this caliber but after the Alex Grinch fire drill of recent years the fact new coordinator D'Anton Lynn has this unit Top 50ish (36th in the latest SP+!) is a step forward. A lot of talent has eroded over the course of the season but I suspect they won’t be a walkover. It’s possible 40 or 50 carries from Leonard, Love and Price could convince them to reconsider how committed they are to actually trying for 60 full minutes but it’s a team that’s played hard all season despite all the foibles and failures.

It’s Notre Dame at USC with a home playoff game on the line. All I want to do is come to South Bend in late December to freeze and cheer and feel some very big feelings. That can’t happen without a sixth Trojans loss and 11th Irish victory. There hasn’t been an easy win at the Coliseum this century and while nobody said this would be easy and it doesn’t have to be pretty it must be done. This team has been playing so well and they are so damn close it would be a shame to stop now. Beat SC.

7) Wait, isn’t the newsletter usually done now? Yes, correct, but usually I do not get to attend a monster basketball game on regular newsletter weekends. Coming into this season, there were six women’s basketball teams clustered at the top in national title betting odds: South Carolina (defending champs), UConn, Texas, UCLA, USC and Notre Dame. Now, you’re probably aware the season concludes with a Final Four, not a Final Six, which means positioning among the sextet will be important for bracket purposes come March. Enter Saturday and Notre Dame at Southern Cal in a top-five matchup. 

One way to get a leg up on the competition is for one of those teams to go into the gym of one of the others down two All-Conference players and lead by 21 in the fourth quarter. The Galen Center was a paper sellout and while the crowd had bursts of energy they could never truly get into it due to the fact the Irish led the Trojans the entire game. It was still quite a scene, with some legitimate Thems (Snoop Dogg, Michael B. Jordan) along with Irish royalty (Jackie Young), basketball legends (Candace Parker, Cheryl Miller) and a slew of current WNBA players. 

While the entire focus of the in-game production and national media was JuJu Watkins, the assembled constellation got to witness Olivia Miles and Hannah Hidalgo dominate. If you have the ability to see them play in person I can’t recommend it highly enough as what they’re doing on the hardwood is as much art as it is sport. Miles is the heir to Jerian Grant in mad basketball science, seeing the floor at a level few do and adding flair whenever she can. Her stretching one-armed layups are too much for opposing guards to stop and during her injury she tuned up her three-point jumper to the point she is shooting 54% from range on nearly five attempts per game. Her preferred celebration is a joyous skip and it brings me such happiness to see her out there knowing how many games were taken from her via injury.

(It was extra fun for Miles to do this in front of a contingent from the Los Angeles Sparks, who own the second pick in the draft. A decade of Miles-Cam Brink collaboration would fix a lot of things in this broken world.) 

Joy is not the first word I would use to describe Hidalgo’s game (it would probably be “menace,” for the record), although it’s a feeling inspired by watching her play and a demonic grin is often involved in the proceedings. She performs with an unparalleled level of effort of energy, stomping and flexing and shouting and shittalking on both ends of the floor. I cannot imagine what it’s like to watch her play from the perspective of the opponent, knowing that she’s taking the legs and will from those she’s defending in a way that will wear them to a nub by the fourth quarter. She throws herself at the basket without an inkling of fear but beyond the ruthless aggression her game is a surfeit of skill, pull-ups and cuts and a three-point jumper that’s hitting at over 40% so far this season. 

While it’s certainly nice to have the best backcourt in the nation, the domination of the Trojans was a team effort. Sonia Citron is a perfect basketball player and in this calendar year she has put Paige Bueckers and Watkins (both likely No. 1 overall picks) in absolute hell on defense in addition to having the kind of shooting form they write poems about. Cass Prosper has grown so much since last season and Liatu King is so crafty, so damn strong and will prove to be a match up nightmare as the season progresses. True freshman Kate Koval had dominated weaker competition to start the year and was slightly staggered by the size and speed of USC initially but by the second half she had caught up. She’s already an incredibly intelligent player with her positioning and avoidance of dumb fouls, and it’s scary to think what her offensive game will be by the end of this season, let alone by the time she’s an upperclassman.

It was a really special day and I am thrilled about what Niele Ivey has built. The road does not get easier, with a Top 20 TCU team coming up on Friday and then games next month with fellow title contenders Texas and UConn. I love this basketball team so much, always looking to get into transition and sharing the ball with such selflessness the entire debate of “Can Miles and Hidalgo coexist?” seems extra pointless. I also adore that they do it with so much style and personality, from the guards’ demonstrative nature on the floor to how Ivey is immaculately dressed on the sideline. (Fun bonus of Saturday: The injured Irish players eschewing warmups to throw insane fits of their own. When in Tinseltown, you gotta represent.)

I’ve said this before but I will repeat myself: If you have any interest in basketball or excellence or artistry or enjoying Notre Dame successes, watch this team whenever you can. Who knows what March and April will bring but they’re special, worthy of your attention and only going to get better when Maddy Westbeld and Liza Karlen join the fray.