D Fence

6"10" forward Kebba Njie headed to ND!! Penn State transfer. https://notredame.rivals.com/news/penn-state-transfer-kebba-njie-follows-shrewsberrry-to-notre-dame

Here is a link to a cool story about how the 3 commits wound up announcing on consecutive days. It sounds like they got clearance from admissions to go public, which explains the delay in announcing... https://www.ndinsider.com/story/sports/mens-basketball/2023/05/03/zionsvilles-logan-imes-commits-to-play-for-notre-dame-while-in-italy/70177203007/

Thanks ND Jack - yes, 8 schollie players now and hopefully they can add Kebba Njie as a transfer from Penn State. Njie has a CB to ND and should be deciding soon.

Yep, and they just landed former PSU commit and '23 guard Logan Imes from IN. Given the timing, they didn't have many options for this cycle. Glad they could flip a few commits and hopefully get another transfer or two just to get a team on the court this year.

Big get with Gilbert today. Huge haul this year stacked against last year. Impressive. Not much remaining on O outside of an OT or two, a 2nd RB and whether they decide to add 1 more WR like Robinson. Need to get going at LB and a few more Safeties.

Top 100 forward Carey Booth, class of '23 commits to ND! 6'10" our of Denver. BREAKING: Top100 Forward Carey Booth Commits to Notre Dame 2 hours ago

Braeden Shrewsbery officially announced today that he's joining ND. That was in the works for a while, but good that he gets his moment. Sounds like some in-home visits are happening this week, so hopefully we can get up to 7 or 8 scholarship players soon.

Crazy to think that soon we could be nearly done on offense, outside of big game hunting for a 2nd RB, Guerby Lambert and then maybe a 2nd stability-type QB if the staff decides to go that route.

Looks like ND is out for Girard and he will pick either LSU or Clemson

With ND formally announcing 2 assistants last week: Mike Farrelly and Kyle Getter, they can now get on the road to recruit. Getter in particular is known as a strong recruiter. I was a little surprised to see Ven Allen-Lubin go. While Shrewsberry uses his bigs differently than Brey, it seems like Lubin played a lot more in the paint anyway

It was hard to tell just watching the extended highlights, but it looked like C. Lewis got beaten badly a few times and missed a tackle that led to a TD. Hopefully that was just a blip. Heard Onye continued to impress, as well as the younger LBs (Ziegler, Zinter, Ausberry, etc.)

Apparently Logan Imes visited ND yesterday and there are 2 CBs for ND to land him. Also a CB for ND for Carey Booth visiting in just over a week.

I heard Kebba Njie is visiting ND tomorrow (4/17). That would be a good start landing him.

Yep, with 2 OL committed, there is some thought that we only take 3 OL and the top target for that spot is Lambert. If Prescod loves his visit this weekend and wants to commit, I think we take him and go up to 4 if Lambert wants in.

I saw on Twitter that Carey Booth is visiting ND on 4/26. That would be great if we can land him. Transfer guard Austin Nunez from ASU will likely also visit.

I was hoping we'd have more news about transfers, recruits, etc. by now, but hopefully we will start hearing soon. ND mens hoops currently has 5 players planned for the roster: 4 remaining players plus incoming freshman Markus Burton. It sounds like Micah Shrewsberry's son Braeden, a 6'2" guard, will be coming to ND. 2 PSU '23 recruits who got out of their NLI are Carey Booth, a 6"10 forward who is NBAer Calvin Booth's son, and Logan Imes, a 6'4 guard from Indiana. Not sure if either will come to ND, but both would be nice to get us to 8. Also, PSU freshman Kebba Njie, a 6'10" big who I thought played well in the B1G and NCAA tourney, entered the portal. He's a bit raw, but young and athletic. A few other players in the portal that list ND as of interest or at least have been in discussions, but like football transfers will likely be quiet until they commit somewhere publicly.

I think our DL class has the chance to be really good. Even if we take 6 DL / edge guys, I can see us not having room for some very good players. Our staff seems to love our CB commits and is looking to add there. LB and S are 2 groups I'd like to see shake out a little more, ideally with a few commits.

Our defense. I think the offense will be able to score on people. We lost a lot of production on the DL and our LBs did not play well at all last year. Teams that wanted to run on us ran it down our throat (OSU, USC, Marshall).

From what I could tell from the first practice photos, here are new jersey #'s: Changes: Xavier Watts - from 26 to 0 Deion Colzie - from 16 to 0 Chris Tyree - from 25 to 2 Merriweather - from 15 to 5 Jaden Mickey - from 21 to 7 Jaylon Sneed - from 17 to 3 Tyson Ford - from 98 to 95 Freshmen / Transfers: Jean-Baptiste - 1 Minchey - 8 Hartman - 10 Harper - 13 James - 14 Flores - 17 Greathouse - 19 Shuler - 21 Minich - 22 Ausberry - 23 Zinter - 25 Gray - 29 Bowen - 34 Pendleton - 72 Houstan - 98 Kaleb Smith - 80

Yep, really happy about this. I'm sure he will be on the transfer wire right away. Should be fun watching this develop over the next few weeks.

Edit to my post above, Sports Illustrated mentioned yesterday that Micah Shrewsberry from Penn State has emerged as a leading candidate, but PSU is putting together a very strong offer to keep him.

Yep, I read that into the situation as well. Also, Iona loses their coach and names a replacement right away and we've been going on months with no word. I only hope that means we're targeting a high profile coach who is still in the tourney.

Man - Brey is leaving this program in shambles. Crickets from Swarbrick on the search and they're going to have like 5 players left to greet our new coach. Hopefully it gets interesting when the new hire gets in and hits the portal for roster options.

Holy crap on Mills. Estime gets much bigger he won't be able to cradle a football.

While it's been noted that Luke is a fantastic recruiter, it sounds like one of the things that caused him to step back was the grind. I'll be curious as to how Marcus might flex here given that he's been very public about how he wants the staff to grind on the recruiting trail, in both his words and his actions.