Tag: West Lafayette

No rain forecast for Notre Dame’s Shillelagh Trophy clash with Purdue

Beautiful day for football.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – If you take a look at the above photo of Ross-Ade Stadium, you’ll notice it’s a beautiful day in West Lafayette. It’s a perfect indication that the weather will cooperate for Notre Dame’s renewed Shillelagh Trophy clash with Purdue. And if you don’t believe that for certain, look no further than the official AccuWeather forecast.

The forecast indicates that the temperature will hover around the upper 80s and lower 90s throughout the game under cloudy skies. But the clouds will be nothing than an illusion for precipitation.

Just for kicks, let’s take a look at what the weather will be back in South Bend during this game. The forecast calls for similar temperatures under mostly sunny skies.

The temperatures will drop into the lower 80s and eventually upper 70s by the time the Irish return to campus. Hopefully, they’ll have the Shillelagh Trophy earned via a victory with them.

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Ryan Walters on Notre Dame: Purdue to face ‘angry football team’

Will this be a good or bad thing?

Purdue expected to face a ranked Notre Dame team to come to Ross-Ade Stadium. It didn’t expect to be facing a team fresh off losing its home opener to Northern Illinois. So coach Ryan Walters realizes that his team will need to be especially smart in preparing for the upcoming game.

Walters knows the Irish have something to prove now more than ever, and he doesn’t anticipate them to be so demoralized by losing to the Huskies that just won’t bother to come out and play. In speaking with the media in West Lafayette, he said what should be expected:

So the question is whether the Irish are so angry that they’ll double down on their focus or whether they’re so angry that they’ll lose their focus. This game against the Boilermakers will tell us a lot about this year’s team. Whether that turns out for the better or worse is up to them.

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Notre Dame loses diving coach Mark Bradshaw to Purdue

This is a tough loss.

Notre Dame already is feeling the effects of suspending its men’s swimming program for next season after a gambling culture revelation. Although the diving team still will be allowed to compete, it will have to do so with a new coach.

[autotag]Mark Bradshaw[/autotag] coached the Irish divers for the past three seasons. Previously, he spent 23 seasons in that role at Arizona State. Now, he’ll be taking his talents to West Lafayette and joining Purdue as its associate head coach under new coach David Boudia.

While it’s not known definitively whether the men’s swimming suspension played a role in Bradshaw leaving, the the Irish only have two men’s divers on their roster for the 2024-25 season whereas the Boilermakers have seven. That alone gives Bradshaw a challenge much more worth taking on.

The Irish are going to have to do quite a lot to rebuild their program once they’re able to compete again. This is only one sign of that.

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Notre Dame to face Purdue on Nov. 10 in West Lafayette

Mark your calendars.

The rivalry between Notre Dame and Purdue should be more of a thing. After all, they’re the only two programs in Indiana to have won national championships. The good news is they’ll play each other for a second straight season.

The Boilermakers have announced that they will welcome the Irish to Mackey Arena on Nov. 10. It will be the Irish’s first trip to West Lafayette since a 66-38 victory in December 2011. That team included future WNBA players [autotag]Devereaux Peters[/autotag], [autotag]Natalie Novosel[/autotag], [autotag]Skylar Diggins[/autotag], [autotag]Kayla McBride[/autotag] and [autotag]Natalie Achonwa[/autotag].

The Irish hosted the Boilermakers in South Bend last season on the day [autotag]Muffet McGraw[/autotag]’s statue was unveiled outside Purcell Pavilion. They cruised to a 76-39 victory to tie the all-time series at 14 wins apiece. [autotag]Hannah Hidalgo[/autotag] led the charge with 23 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists and seven steals. [autotag]Maddy Westbeld[/autotag] had a double-double of 15 points and 12 boards, and [autotag]Natalija Marshall[/autotag] scored 14 points off the bench.

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Watch 1992 ESPN highlight of Notre Dame shutout win over Purdue

Remember this game?

While it may not seem like it on the surface, there are quite a few present-day connections to Notre Dame’s 48-0 shutout of Purdue in 1992.

The Irish and Boilermakers will face each other in 2024. Although this game will take place in West Lafayette as opposed to the 1992 game in South Bend, a player involved in that game, Irish All-American [autotag]Aaron Taylor[/autotag], will be seen on that game’s broadcast on CBS as he just joined the network’s college football pregame show.

On ESPN’s recap of the game, you can see Taylor being highlighted as a blocker for one of [autotag]Jerome Bettis[/autotag]’ two touchdowns that day:

While Bettis did well on this day, he still couldn’t touch Reggie Brooks, who ran for three touchdowns and 205 yards. In fact, all of the Irish’s touchdowns for that game came on the ground with [autotag]Rick Mirer[/autotag] and [autotag]Kevin McDougal[/autotag] rounding out the scoring. How times have changed considering today’s pass-heavy game.

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CBS to broadcast Notre Dame-Purdue; kickoff time set

Clear your late afternoon and early evening for Sept. 14.

Notre Dame and Purdue are natural rivals in that they both call the state of Indiana their home. Now, we know when they’ll be kicking off Sept. 14 in West Lafayette and how the game can be seen. The contest will begin at 3:30 p.m. EDT and be broadcast on CBS in its first full season covering the Big Ten.

The Irish on CBS is nothing new as the network covered their victory in last season’s Sun Bowl. CBS last broadcast a regular-season game for the Irish during their 2019 loss to Georgia. The Irish have won 34 of their previous 50 nationally-televised games on the network.

With this announcement, the Irish will be on each of the three original broadcast networks during their first three weeks. Their season opener Aug. 31 against Texas A&M will be on ABC, and NBC naturally will cover the Sept. 7 home opener against Northern Illinois.

We’ll see if Fox, the fourth broadcast network, picks up a game later on, perhaps the regular-season finale at USC. For now though, the 2024 Irish have a diverse TV profile.

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Big Ten opponents Notre Dame should play annually if it ever joins

Just picture at least some of these games happening annually.

The Big Ten has unveiled its “Flex Protect Plus” scheduling model, which will take effect when USC and UCLA join the conference in 2024. Eleven particular matchups will be protected and thus played every year, and every school will play every school at least twice over a four-year period. There will be both annual and rotating matchups over each team’s nine-game league schedule.

Which brings us to Notre Dame. We all know about the Irish being denied entry into the Big Ten in the 20th century’s early years, but times areMidw changing. With college football’s landscape radically changing soon, questions about the feasibility of the Irish’s longtime independence are being raised. Plus, with their next athletic director currently heading NBC Sports Group and the Big Ten about to start a long-term TV deal with NBC, the Irish almost seem destined for full-time Big Ten membership.

Now, before you Irish traditionalists hang me from the top of the Golden Dome, really think about this. Many of the Irish’s most frequent opponents in their history are based in the Midwest. This would revive annual or semi-annual rivalries that largely have been discarded to fulfill obligations to the East Coast-centeric ACC. Nothing against that conference, but Wake Forest, North Carolina and Georgia Tech just seem to be awkwardly forced upon the fan base by the arrangement and don’t exactly rile anyone up.

In the event of a Big Ten membership, certain parameters will have to be set for the Irish. They definitely would need to keep Navy as one of its nonconference opponents because any season not completely compromised by COVID that doesn’t have the Midshipmen just seems wrong. Other than that, there are some opponents that need to be scheduled every year or at least merit consideration for that. Here are the ones most worth considering:

2022 ACC/Big Ten Challenge matchups announced

Besides the one involving the Irish, which game most interests you?

Few things draw more excitement during the early part of the college basketball season than the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Every team from one power conference matches up against one from the other. Whether the opponent is good or bad, it also is nice for these teams to see how well they do against a similar level of competition. It definitely is one of the major tuneups for when the conference schedule begins.

The 2022 matchups have been announced, and the ACC would like to change its luck. The conference won this series, which began in 1999, in each of its first 10 seasons. Since then, its only wins have come in 2016 and 2017, the latter of which saw it post a series-best 11-3 record. The Big Ten has had the upper hand in each of the past three years, so a changing of the guard is overdue.

Here are the matchups for this year’s edition:

All of 2021 March Madness To Be Held in Indiana

The NCAA made it official Monday by announcing that this year’s men’s basketball tournament will be held entirely in Indiana.

The NCAA made it official Monday by announcing that this year’s men’s basketball tournament will be held entirely in Indiana. This has been known for a while, but a detailed plan has not been revealed until now. Most of the tournament will take place in Indianapolis, including the Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium, and other games will be hosted in Bloomington and West Lafayette.

At 3-6 overall and winless through three ACC games, Notre Dame needs to turn it around fast if it hopes to make the field for this unique version of March Madness. The Irish almost surely would have to win the ACC Tournament at this rate, and that’s a long shot with five conference teams currently ranked and three more receiving votes in the latest AP poll. As difficult as it seems, Mike Brey teams have a penchant for surprising people. How do we know it can’t happen again?