Tag: BYU

Help Notre Dame safety Brandon Joseph win the Lott Trophy player of the week

Brandon Joseph, Lott Trophy player of the week sounds good

When [autotag]Brandon Joseph[/autotag] transferred from Northwestern, it was viewed as a massive win for the Notre Dame secondary. So far he’s had an up-and-down season, but it seems like the bye week helped Joseph a lot.

After not registering a tackle against North Carolina, the former All-American was all over the place against BYU. Joseph tallied six tackles and was instrumental in holding Cougar quarterback [autotag]Jaren Hall[/autotag] to just 120 yards on the night and a very pedestrian quarterback rating of just 54.7. That effort caught the eyes of the Lott Trophy, who annual awards the best safety in the country, and Joseph is up for week six honors.

Help him out and click on the link, to vote for Joseph to win the week 6 honors from the Lott Trophy.

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Who thought Notre Dame was among the top team performances in week 6

A winning streak will do that

The Irish finally are playing football at the level many of us believed they would play all season. After playing BYU and defeating them soundly, [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] must be extremely happy how his team has bounced back from losing the first two games of the season.

We aren’t the only one’s who have noticed the massive turnaround, some people in the media are starting to come back around to the Irish as well. Even though [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] wasn’t considered as one of his top 6 teams after this past week, ESPN analyst [autotag]Kirk Herbstreit[/autotag] still thought very highly of the effort against BYU and named the team effort by Notre Dame as one of the best performances from this past weekend.

A three-game winning streak, with their recent victory against a ranked team will catch the eyes of many. The Irish will try to keep their streak alive this coming weekend as they host Stanford in South Bend.

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Top 10 remains steady in latest USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll

The top ten in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll remained unchanged with lots of movement below it after last week’s action

One team that played in the Red River Showdown joined the top 25 in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, and it wasn’t the Oklahoma Sooners. After dominating their rivals, the Texas Longhorns are back among the ranked at No. 24.

The Big 12 has six teams in the top 25, with Oklahoma State still leading the pack at No. 7. TCU is working its way up the rankings; the Frogs are up another three spots from last week at No. 15.

The top ten remained exactly the same as it was a week ago, with the Alabama Crimson Tide keeping the top spot with Georgia not too far behind. Alabama did have trouble with unranked Texas A&M, but held on for the win without star quarterback Bryce Young.

Out west, USC remains at No. 6, while UCLA rose a whopping seven spots to claim the No. 12 ranking. With Oregon just ahead of the Bruins at No. 11 and Utah at No. 19, the Pac-12 is looking very interesting all of a sudden.

No one fell further this week than Mark Stoops’ Kentucky Wildcats. After losing to South Carolina at home, Kentucky fell nine spots to No. 22.

BYU, Washington, and Arkansas all fell out of the rankings entirely after last week’s action.

Many of the top ten teams have tough matchups next week. Alabama is going on the road to play Tennessee, Michigan is playing Penn State in Ann Arbor, and Oklahoma State is going to Fort Worth to play TCU. The top ten in this poll could look a lot different after week seven.

A look at the full USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll powered by USA TODAY Sports:

Rank Team Record Points Change
1 Alabama 6-0 1,540 (35) –
2 Georgia 6-0 1,516 (18) –
3 Ohio State 6-0 1,477 (10) –
4 Michigan 6-0 1,354 –
5 Clemson 6-0 1,328 –
6 Southern California 6-0 1,219 –
7 Oklahoma State 5-0 1,197 –
8 Tennessee 5-0 1,168 –
9 Ole Miss 6-0 1,075 –
10 Penn State 5-0 992 –
11 Oregon 4-1 885 +1
12 UCLA 6-0 815 +7
13 NC State 5-1 808 +1
14 Wake Forest 5-1 776 +1
15 TCU 5-0 765 +3
16 Kansas State 5-1 539 +4
17 Mississippi State 5-1 533 +6
18 Syracuse 5-0 424 +3
19 Utah 4-2 364 -8
20 Kansas 5-1 290 -3
21 Cincinnati 5-1 248 +5
22 Kentucky 4-2 219 -9
23 Baylor 3-2 210 -1
24 Texas 4-2 155 +10
25 North Carolina 5-1 99 +15

Schools dropped out:

No. 16 Brigham Young; No. 24 Washington; No. 25 Arkansas.

Others receiving votes:

Brigham Young 82; Illinois 77; James Madison 70; Coastal Carolina 55; Florida 52; Tulane 32; South Carolina 21; Minnesota 14; Notre Dame 13; Central Florida 10; Maryland 8; Washington State 7; Washington 7; Texas A&M 7; Purdue 7; Louisiana State 5; Liberty 5; Florida State 4; Pittsburgh 2; San Jose State 1.

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College football scores: USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll Top 25 results

What changes next week after all these results Saturday?

It wasn’t the craziest weekend of college football as there wasn’t that one major upset that left the world shaking their collective head but there was plenty of action in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll as six of the nation’s top 25 teams went down.

That very well could have been seven had Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M actually called a real play on the final down at Alabama instead of whatever in the wide world of sports they drew up.

This week was good but next week has the makings of the biggest college football Saturday of the year.  Check out this week’s results below first though!

CFN – AP Top 25 Poll, Rankings Prediction: Week 6

Will Notre Dame find themselves ranked again on Sunday?

What will the Associated Press college football top 25 look like when it’s released on Sunday after another exciting Saturday of games but no major upsets?

Pete Fiutak of College Football News always likes to project how the writers are going to vote and releases his AP Top 25 Poll rankings prediction after the major games get done each Saturday.

Notre Dame fans might be happy to know Fiutak has the Irish making their way back into the top 25 after their 28-20 win over BYU in the Shamrock Series. Fiutak has the Irish checking in 23rd. Check out his entire list of 25 at College Football News.

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Photos from Notre Dame’s Shamrock Series win over BYU

Here are some images you might have missed in this year’s Shamrock Series game.

Notre Dame defeated BYU, 28-20, in its annual Shamrock Series game. It might not have been the prettiest win, but nobody’s counting that. All we know is the Irish are above .500 for the first time this season, and that’s a great first step towards getting into a quality bowl game. Yes, it stinks that we’ve had to temper our expectations for this season, but that’s how it goes in college football.

The nice thing about this game is that it set the Allegiant Stadium attendance record for a college game (62,742), which previously was held by last year’s Pac-12 title game. It qualified as a sellout, so if you weren’t there, you only could imagine what it was like to be there in Las Vegas. We can’t replicate the atmosphere exactly, but we can give you some images to illustrate what people at the game saw. Here they are, and we know you enjoyed the outcome:

How Twitter reacted to Notre Dame-BYU: Cougars side

Some folks aren’t happy with this outcome (big shock).

BYU entered its contest against Notre Dame as a ranked team. However, it didn’t enter with the best momentum after it had trouble beating a struggling Utah State the week before. Fans took notice of that and wondered if it was an omen for when the Cougars played the Irish. It turned that were kind of right as the Cougars lost, 28-20.

Cougars fans shouldn’t feel too bad as the Irish have yet to lose a Shamrock Series game, and their team just happened to be the opponent this year. Still, that fact has to be of little consolation for them. This has been one of the best programs in the country to this point, and it’s worth wondering how much longer they’ll be ranked, if at all. In any case, Cougars fans took to Twitter to vent their frustrations, and it probably hurts even more given how close their team was to completing a comeback:

How Twitter reacted to Notre Dame-BYU: Irish side

How do you feel after that?

Notre Dame fans surely will tell you that their team’s 28-20 win over BYU in the annual Shamrock Series game should have gone better. That shouldn’t be a surprise given the high standard the program historically has set, and fans are right to want the program to uphold that standard. However, they don’t give extra points or wins for style, so the Irish and their fans will have to be content with getting over .500 for the first time this season. People probably aren’t happy that that had to wait until October, but all’s well that ends well.

If you want to know how Irish fans in general feel after this game, look no further than Twitter. No matter how they expressed themselves, they all are happy just the same with a victory not everyone predicted would come. Here’s a general sense of Irish fans’ thoughts after the victory in Las Vegas:

Notre Dame No. 16 BYU: 5 Instant Takeaways

A lot to clean up but it’s a win. What are your main takeaways?

It can never be easy, can it?

Leading 25-6 in the third quarter it looked like Notre Dame was certainly headed to 3-2 with relative ease and a second half that was in complete control.

It appeared that way until it didn’t.

BYU converted their first third down of the game with 6:44 left in the third quarter and suddenly a light when on for the Cougars.  Two plays later Jaren Hall found Kody Epps for 53 yards and a touchdown and it was game on instead of game over.

Notre Dame ultimately survived with a 28-20 victory in a game that shouldn’t have been as close as the final score said, but the Irish have nobody to blame but themselves for it ending up that way, either.

Here are five instant takeaways from the thriller on the strip that simply shouldn’t have been close.

Twitter reacts to Michael Mayer’s second touchdown against BYU

Once again, this dude is good.

Clearly, breaking the Notre Dame reception record for tight ends on a go-ahead score wasn’t enough for [autotag]Michael Mayer[/autotag]. He decided he needed to make the point as to who’s the best at his position in program history again and again. [autotag]Drew Pyne[/autotag], gifted with plenty of time to observe his options thank to his offensive line, has been more than happy to help Mayer make that point. Here they are teaming up to give Mayer his second touchdown of this Shamrock Series game:

We don’t know what else Mayer will do in this game or even the rest of this season, but we know that time likely is going to be filled with plays filling up highlight reels. Everyone make sure you appreciate what Mayer has to offer because once he’s gone, you’ll be yearning for his days to come back. Fortunately, that’s in the future, which means you can tweet things like this in the present: