Notre Dame’s recent hot streak continued today when four star corner Micah Bell pledged to the Irish. The 5’11”, 170 pound Texan boasts elite speed, posting wind-legal personal bests of 10.41 in the 100 meter and 20.89 in the 200 meter this past spring. And oh by the way he also put up a 24’5-1/4” long jump and 45’9-1/2” triple jump. He’s really fast and really explosive, which seems like it might be helpful but I’m not an expert so I guess we’ll see…
COMMITTED!!!🍀🍀🍀 pic.twitter.com/ydPjd7Thjw
— Micah Bell (@Bell11M) July 1, 2022
The Irish staff turned up their interest in Bell when former commit Justyn Rhett started to look shaky, and really turned it up when Rhett decommitted. That comprehensive approach to class planning is something that, uh, may have been missing in the former regime (anyone remember CJ Williams and Amorion Walker?). It paid off in a big way with Bell, who is certainly nobody’s consolation prize – in fact since Rhett left the class, Bell has actually passed him in the 247 Composite rankings.
Micah’s older brother Dillon is about to start his freshman year at Georgia, which of course made it reasonable to wonder if they would be big players for Micah too. They never offered but it’s not clear it would’ve mattered, as Micah really didn’t show much interest in anyone else once Notre Dame got serious about him. In fact the only official visit he took before committing was to check out the Irish program on June 17th.
Recruiting Service Rankings
247Sports Composite — 4 star (.9451 rating), #120 overall, #13 CB, #20 in TX
On3 Consensus — 4 star (92.15 rating), #118 overall, #11 CB, #19 in TX
The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.
247Sports — 4 star (94 rating), #55 overall, #8 CB, #12 in TX
On3 — 3 star (89 rating), NR overall, #41 CB, #63 in TX (???)
Rivals — 4 star (5.9 rating), #114 overall, #16 CB, #20 in TX
ESPN — 4 star (83 rating), #128 overall, #9 CB, #26 in TX
Friend of the Stripes Jamie Uyeyama does the recruit evaluations for ISD, and we trust his evals as much as anyone’s. So while the 247 Composite and the On3 Consensus don’t factor in ISD evals, we put a lot of weight on them ourselves.
Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (91 rating)
Cohort
In addition to Notre Dame, Bell holds offers from Arkansas, Baylor, Duke, Florida, LSU, Michigan (lol), Oregon, Stanford, TCU, and Wisconsin, among others.
Highlights
We offer a pre-emptive RIP to all the “nice track times but I don’t see that speed on film” guys. Holy cripes is Bell fast, and just as important, his acceleration is absolutely outstanding. As you can tell from these highlights his high school uses him heavily on offense, as did Allen Rossum’s back in the day (Rossum was a triple option quarterback). Bell is bigger than Rossum but still a bit slight to be a runner at the next level, which is why his projected future is at corner.
On the defensive plays here, you can see great potential on that side of the ball too. The play at 2:06 really jumped out to me, where he mirrors a pretty good double move to make a deep interception. That is just really, really hard to do, and it makes me excited to see what he looks like after he focuses on defense. He also attacks the ball in the air very well and, when he gets a chance to lay a hit, he brings it.
Impact
We’ve talked about the logjam of talent ahead of some recent offensive line commits. It’s a different story at corner, where kids generally have a better chance of being ready early and specifically for Notre Dame have a clearer path to the field at the moment. I could see Bell working into the nickel rotation early and eventually emerging as a very good starter at field corner. I also wouldn’t at all be surprised to see him get a look as a return man on special teams, which is yet another parallel with Rossum. Not a bad guy to be compared to…
Welcome to the Irish family, Micah!
Recruiting is just unreal right now – our class is basically one commitment away from passing last year’s class, which itself was one of our better classes in years. Not only are we #1 overall, but we’re #3 in terms of average ranking. Truly unbelievable.
It’d be pretty cool if our first-year recruiting class for Freeman is better than Lincoln Riley’s at USC.
Oh, I think it’s a virtual certainty that we’ll be higher than SC. They’re probably looking at a top finish of around 7th or 8th, I think, if a lot of things break their way, while we’re very close to being locked into the top five.
True story.
Yup, I was looking into USC, and it doesn’t look like they are in for a big bump recruiting really. Perhaps they will end up with 4 top 100 players (most/all on offense – one is an athlete so I assume offense) which is where they have been the last 2 years. They obviously got a big infusion of talent with the transfer portal but I would have expected a bigger Riley recruiting bump more quickly.
It’s interesting to note that it seems like Oklahoma will finish around the same number of top 100 players as they’ve had in the past few years too which means they haven’t quite taken a bit hit in recruiting necessarily from losing Riley.
Other than the loss to returning production.
Yea, Oklahoma lost some talent in the immediate but it apparently hasn’t really affected their recruiting in terms of top-end talent. I think they even have an elite QB too.
That’s interesting because if Riley was an elite recruiter you’d expect some drop-off. But Riley hasn’t really brought an improvement to USC recruiting and Oklahoma’s recruiting hasn’t really been a downgrade. We’ll need some more evidence obviously but the little evidence we have for this year he’s not quite looking like an elite recruiter (I’m of course not saying he’s bad by any stretch of the imagination).
You absolutely love to see it.
I’ve been an ND fan since the fall of 2006. I know that we’re not going to stay at the top, but this echelon of class is simply not something I thought ND was capable of. Grateful to admit my mistake!
For sure. Before Freeman, they surely take a 3-star CB when they lose out on Rhett. (And pre-Freeman, Notre Dame probably doesn’t even get that one-time verbal from Rhett in the first place).
Bell said to 247: “They were after me the most. They were showing me that they wanted me the most. That put them ahead of any other school in my eyes.”
Hard to imagine that sales pitch either happens or clicks quite the same without Freeman. He’s doing really special stuff that’s resonating, and given his personality/authenticity, it is only going to continue.
Love to see that speed… Maybe we can have him returns some punts and kick offs?
I know nothing about track. But it seems very impressive that his 200 time is only .07s off the pace of his impressive 100 time.
And since I know nothing about track did some googling for a point of reference. 20.89 200m would have been 22nd fastest at the 2017 NCAA championships (first results that popped up).
Usain Bolt world record: 19.19 200m
(9.58 100m)
ND 200m record: Outdoor – 20.4 Bill Hurd 1969. Indoor – 21.02 Chris Giesting 2014.
Troy Pride – 10.47/21.16
GA III – 10.61/21.53
So I like the Rossum comparison (NDs 60m record holder) even though he was a bit faster with a 10.02 100m in HS.
And naturally Rocket holds NDs 55m record (But only wan a 10.20 100m)