These things are a lot easier to write after wins, but here goes. Notre Dame lost to Ohio State 21-10 tonight, sending Marcus Freeman to 0-2 and creating the easiest wisecrack in the history of Twitter about the much-discussed and hyped new Notre Dame coach. It's funny how pregame narratives can be so wrong. What [...]
Diving full-bore into football and basketball season is certainly fun, but one of college sports' simplest pleasures is diving headlong onto the bandwagon of a team you don't generally follow. We Notre Dame fans certainly did that over the weekend as the Irish stunned Tennessee, unanimous #1 team and newly minted villains of college baseball, [...]
We haven't done a ton of basketball coverage here at 18 Stripes this season. For most of the year, the Irish just weren't really worth writing about; they were a decent-to-good team in what appeared to be a terrible conference, and as those teams do they ended up on the bubble for this year's NCAA [...]
If Notre Dame couldn't get this one, against this team, with the momentum they had coming in, then it's easy to self-flagellate and think the Irish are just never going to win one of these things. Notre Dame lost the Fiesta Bowl to Oklahoma State 37-35, not scoring the entire second half until it was [...]
The game was almost beside the point Saturday as Notre Dame dominated Stanford 45-14 to move into the clubhouse at 11-1 in a season that against all odds will end as very much part of the College Football Playoff story. Coach Brian Kelly abandoned any pretense of being gentlemanly at the end of the game, [...]
What more could you ask than a 55-0 beating of an overmatched foe on Senior Day to clinch Notre Dame's 5th straight 10-win season? The Irish completely took over the game on Jack Kiser's pick-six to make it 10-0, and from there the only drama was how much action the senior reserves would get. Georgia [...]
Notre Dame did what you're supposed to do to a team missing its best player Saturday, pounding Virginia 28-3 on the road. Much of the game was perfunctory due to how hopeless the Cavaliers looked offensively, which was certainly because of the absence of Brennan Armstrong, out with a rib injury. However, it's worth crediting [...]
Late in Notre Dame's 44-34 win over North Carolina, the NBC broadcast team discussed that the Irish aren't winning pretty or in dominating fashion - they're just winning. It's something of an 18 Stripes motto that, well, winning is hard. Week after week, doing enough to fight off your opponents, especially on nights you don't [...]
Notre Dame played easily its most complete game of the season Saturday, and picked a fine time to do it, dispatching rival USC 31-16 to get this 'bridge season' back on track. There was plenty to like from the Irish's performance, and even more so because the one thing that went seriously wrong - an [...]
Sometimes you just have no explanation for anything. Notre Dame pulled off a seemingly miraculous 32-29 win over Virginia Tech Saturday night in a game they frankly had no business winning for a million reasons. But somehow, someway, ND survived and will enter a much-needed off week at 5-1 with a chance to reset before [...]
Imagine any Notre Dame team from 1997-2014 winning a game in which its third-string quarterback was taking whacks behind a line anchored by its third and fourth-string left tackle while the starting defensive tackle was out too. The Irish have reached that level as a program and they proved it with a satisfying 31-point fourth-quarter [...]
Notre Dame football might not be as entertaining, or as good, as a year ago, but for the moment the Irish remain undefeated after beating Purdue 27-13. The game was, mostly by default, ND's best performance of the season. It also tied Brian Kelly with Knute Rockne with 105 wins at Notre Dame. As the [...]
There are so many questions that Notre Dame fans will be impatient to get answered after Saturday's 32-29 Houdini act over Toledo. MICHAEL. MAYER. NUFF. SAID. No. 8 @NDFootball 32 - Toledo 29 📺 @peacockTV #GoIrish #BeatRockets pic.twitter.com/1Z4m3l7xZQ — The Fighting Irish (@FightingIrish) September 11, 2021 First of all, let's not sugarcoat this: While Toledo [...]
Well, I've seen enough of the Sunday night opening games to last my entire life. Five years ago was the Texas disaster, and this one came darn close to being just as soul-crushing. Notre Dame did somehow survive the opener tonight to defeat Florida State and its overwhelming karma boost from McKenzie Milton, 41-38, in [...]
A few years ago, I was into ranking the potential trap games on the Notre Dame football schedule on a scale of 1 to 10 Ackbars. I haven't done it since the beloved admiral (spoiler alert!) was wiped out in The Last Jedi, so RIP to a legend. For reasons unclear to me at this [...]
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