This Friday evening Notre Dame picked up its 22nd commit of the 2023 class as Lakota West High safety/athlete Ben Minich committed to the Fighting Irish. His verbal comes after a late July scholarship offer and crucial visit to campus with Notre Dame quickly moving into pole position for his services.

Recruiting Service Rankings

247Sports Composite — 3 star (.8778 rating), #563 overall, #51 S, #18 in OH

On3 Consensus — 3 star (87.83 rating), #529 overall, #50 S, #15 in OH

The 247 Composite and On3 Consensus both combine 247, On3, Rivals, and ESPN rankings.

247Sports — 4 star (90 rating), NR overall, #24 S, #6 in OH

On3 — 3 star (89 rating), NR overall, #33 S, #13 in OH

Rivals — 3 star (5.6 rating), NR overall, NR S, #34 in OH

ESPN — Not Rated

Irish Sports Daily — 4 star (91 rating)

As things stand today, Minich is the lowest rated recruit in Notre Dame’s class, by a decent margin. The 247 ranking is by far the kindest thus far–and while there has been talk of him getting bumped up to 4-star status in the Composite–he’ll need to jump up at least 153 spots to make that happen.

Cohort

Minich’s offer list is very interesting to say the least. In addition to the Irish offer his other top programs include Oklahoma, Stanford, Cincinnati, and Iowa State. As a very good student, he was carrying plenty of offers from top academic places like Duke, Harvard, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Yale, Army, and Navy.

Highlights

Wow, look at this really gritty player! Okay, we will avoid the racial stereotypes today. The first thing that jumps out with Minich is his quickness. In small areas, he’s bringing a lot of burst and acceleration. It’s a little more difficult to judge his longer speed from safety but based off his highlights and a very successful track career Minich is very fast across all parts of the field.

He’s a sound tackler and combines good physicality with pretty good defensive back skills when the ball is in the air. No doubt, Minich is successful coming down hill and using his speed to make plays in the back field. You can see him developing into a good strong safety in college.

Impact

Minich is coming out of eastern Ohio and it’s curious that none of Pittsburgh, Penn State, Ohio State, Syracuse, West Virginia, Purdue, or any other Power 5 schools within reasonable driving distance offered him a scholarship.

It seems like it’s a combination of Minich being a late bloomer, taking academics seriously, and being a little under-sized. Most of his early offers are from some of the top academic football programs in the country and you wonder if some other schools didn’t even bother wasting their time.

Size maybe will be an issue, we’ll see. Minich is listed anywhere from 6’1″ to 5’11” so it’s possible he’s really in the 5’10” range. However, he looks to have a really nice frame and has the body type where I can see him making serious gains with physicality getting up around 200 pounds in college. To me, he’s the type of player a program like Cincinnati or Iowa State were going to grab and he’d be a 3-year starter for them.

You could argue the Irish can’t be afford to be too picky at safety at the moment with the ongoing drama surrounding Peyton Bowen. There’s a pretty high ceiling for Minich and he’s definitely an intriguing player to take later in the 2023 process to hope he blossoms at Notre Dame.

Welcome to the Irish family, Ben!