Notre Dame, Indiana Balancing Off the Field Challenges Ahead of Playoff Clash
Notre Dame is in the dance.
It’s the goal of every football program and there is no better example of a team striving for the playoff than Indiana.
The Hoosiers were picked to finish 17th in the Big 10 preseason polls and Indiana is one of four teams from the conference still standing, which is impressive given that this is Curt Cignetti’s first season in Bloomington.
It’s quite the feat for Cignetti, as Indiana went 3-9 a year ago, and the roster was supplemented with several transfers from James Madison. Yet, it might not be a surprise to Cignetti, who boldly stated that folks should Google him if they were unaware of his success.
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman played into the bit on Sunday afternoon as he confirmed he had, in fact, Googled Cignetti after the pairing was announced.
”Coach has done a wonderful job to take this program to win 11 games in a Big 10 season and have this team ready to make a run in the playoffs,” stated Freeman. “It’s a credit to the coach. I didn’t know much about him. I took a minute and Googled him and look at some of the things he’s done in the past at other places and he’s won everywhere he’s been.”
The Fighting Irish were expected to be in the College Football Playoff as the talent and experience were there while the schedule was extremely soft for a playoff run. The ability to host a home playoff was also a goal and a significant deal that hasn’t been lost on Freeman.
Yet, Notre Dame is far from satisfied.
”We’ve always had a goal of reaching our full potential and that doesn’t change,” said Freeman. “Our mindset is to prepare in a way that on Friday, when we play, we’re ready to play at the highest level we can. We’re prepared to play against a really good opponent.
“Relived isn’t a word I’ve used as much as we have direction in terms of who we are playing. When we started the season, making the playoffs was a goal of ours, but it’s here and we knew that after the USC game. I think more than anything, there’s a direction because of an opponent.”
Preparing for a college football playoff game is no easy task, but both programs will also have to balance their schedules during game week outside the football facilities.
Indiana and Notre Dame will have final exams the week of the game, so there will be an interesting line of pushing to preparation while also making sure the players stay focused academically.
For Notre Dame, Freeman and the school have worked together for months to develop a plan that will be implemented over the next two weeks.
”It’s been something we’ve been working on since the beginning of the year, even in the summer, we started to have conversations with the academic side, the provost,” Freeman explained. “We have exams during game week, but we’ll be able to practice like we would any other week. It’s just understanding it’s a little bit different week.
“You have your block for when you’ll be able to practice and knowing you have exams in the afternoon. It’s one of the challenges of playing in the playoffs the week of exams, but again, our guys will be prepared for both their exams and the game.”
The other key piece to the puzzle for any program looking to make a deep run is the strength and conditioning program.
Loren Landow is in his first season at Notre Dame and it appears his plan couldn’t be going any better as there has been structure and organization based on the next step in the season.
”You look at it as different cycles or different seasons throughout the year,” Freeman explained. “When he first was hired, you go through winter conditioning to get them ready for 15 practices of spring ball, getting them strong, fast and in football shape. After spring ball, you give them a couple weeks until the end of school to get some workouts and testing in. The summer conditioning and workouts are to get ready for a season. He’s done an unbelievable job.”
Notre Dame isn’t changing too much this month to prepare for the December 20th kickoff other than minor adjustments with the game being on Friday instead of a Saturday.
“The ability to tailor our workouts based off the workloads from games or do we have a bye week coming up and all those things are situations he’s stayed ahead of the curve,” said Freeman. “I wouldn’t say we’ve changed anything in terms of thinking about tailoring this workout for the playoffs. What we had to do when the USC game was over was think about what we were going to do this week.
“We didn’t really get on the practice field until Saturday. We needed to make sure that physically, they were staying in shape, in the weight room, and running on the practice field so that we didn’t lose all those gains we made during the season. Now, we’re into practice mode. We’ll get back to practicing for an opponent starting this week. Loren has done an unbelievable job making sure our guys are ready, but physically and even mentally ready for the week and ready to maximize their physical bodies.”
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