Notre Dame's next step: "Win the thing"
After turning a 7-6 regular season into a historic run to the NCAA Tournament final and falling to Duke in overtime, what can Notre Dame do for an encore?
“Win the thing,” coach Kevin Corrigan said Tuesday with a chuckle. “That’s a pretty simple answer.”
That being said, the Fighting Irish are doing their best to withstand the glare of the national spotlight. It’s business as usual in South Bend, Ind., with the players and coaches turning their attention to themselves.
“I’d like to think that the most significant conversations that the guys on our team have are the internal ones, and those are very much focused on how they’ve always been – on us getting better every day and preparing ourselves to do what we need to do,” Corrigan said . “As long as they stay focused on what we need to do and the day-to-day and what we’re trying to achieve on a daily basis, we’re not a team that looks ahead. We don’t talk about goals, we don’t talk about all that stuff.”
Thusly, Corrigan said offseason workouts, practices and the team’s approach hasn’t really changed.
“I think we’ve done a really good job of staying focused and working hard through the preseason and maybe that’s partly a result of last year’s experience,” he said. “Guys are excited and driven to have success and become the team they think we can become. That’s a sum of everything, but for our seniors, they’ve had quite a ride. [In 2008, the team’s record was] 13-2 and you win a game in the tournament and battle Syracuse in the quarters, 15-0 and lose in the first round [in 2009], and then 7-6 and go to the finals and lose in overtime. They’ve seen a lot and I think all of those experienced certainly have some bearing on what we do and how the guys act every day. But so far at least, the result is that the guys have been very focused.”
Other notes:
*Notre Dame’s tempo-dictating defense boasts two starters in senior Kevin Ridgway and junior Kevin Randall and gets stronger with the return of senior Sam Barnes and junior Jake Brems who return from respective hamstring and knee injuries that sidelined them last season. But the key will be the play of sophomore goalkeeper John Kemp, who must succeed Scott Rodgers, the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament who surrendered just 22 goals and made 53 saves in four tournament games. “I’m very confident in him,” Corrigan said of Kemp, whose older brother Joey was Division I’s Goalie of the Year for the Fighting Irish in 2008. “I think he’s an outstanding goalie. I think mentally, he’s got the makeup that it takes to be a goalie, to be able to handle the rigors of a season. Skill-wise, he’s very good. He’s got poise and confidence, and he understands what’s expected of him. The only thing he’s lacking is experience at the college level, but he got to play a few games last year when Scott got hurt. He’s gotten to play against [Johns] Hopkins and the U.S. national team this fall. So I don’t think he’s coming in totally unprepared. Very confident in what we have in the cage.”
*The graduation of attackman Neal Hicks (23 goals and 14 assists) and midfielder Grant Krebs (24, 4) could be offset by the transfer of Edison Parzanese. The fifth-year senior attackman led Holy Cross in points (35) and assists (19) last spring and is currently among the top six attackmen. “With Edison, it’s easier because he’s been through it – both on the field and off,” Corrigan said of Parzanese’s transition. “He’s a college graduate from Holy Cross. He’s not a transfer. He’s a kid who graduated and is playing his last year while he’s in graduate school here. So you get a kid with a maturity and a poise that’s different than most newcomers to your program. So all of that combined, I don’t think it’s going to be hard. Edison has been kind of slowly figuring it out through the fall and preseason here, and I feel good about where he is right now.”
