The Opening Preview | What We'll Be Listening For
The Opening Finals begins this weekend in Dallas and stretches into next week.
As always, Irish Sports Daily will be on-site providing extensive coverage throughout.
The event features multiple current Notre Dame commits and several targets of varying degrees of interest.
In addition to getting an in-depth look at these players competing against other elite players, which is vital for the most accurate evaluations, we’ll also have the chance to catch up with the prospects to get the latest on their recruitments.
2020 Irish quarterback commit Drew Pyne (pictured) will be in attendance and we’ll try to get him on camera to share his reaction to the latest Notre Dame commit, wide receiver Jay Brunelle Jay Brunelle.
(Spoiler alert: Pyne is fired up per his texts to ISD on Wednesday night, “LETS GOOOOOOOOO…BRUNELLE…I’m so hyped up!”)
We’ll also get additional insight from Pyne and the other pledges in Texas, running back Chris Tyree and tight end Michael Mayer, on the Notre Dame’s growing 2020 class and their thoughts heading into their finals season of high school football.
As ISD’s Matt Freeman reported on Thursday, Irish defensive end commit Jordan Botelho will not be in Texas.
We’ll absolutely look to catch up with Lathan Ransom (pictured above). The 2020 Arizona safety took official visits to Notre Dame, Texas and Ohio State this month and those are the schools that seem to have the most traction heading into a decision, which is expected relatively soon. The Irish appear to be second or third of the three right now. Is that accurate or do they have a better chance than most believe?
Defensive end and linebacker aren’t primary focus points for Notre Dame in the Class of 2020 right now, but the Irish have maintained contact with Georgia DE/OLB Phillip Webb in recent weeks. He included Notre Dame in the Top 11 he released a couple weeks back. With the dead period upon us, no visits can be made until next month and while it’s unlikely Webb makes it to South Bend this summer, what are the chances he makes it in the fall? We’ll ask him.
The Irish look to be in a great spot to land 2020 cornerback Caleb Offord when he announces on The Fourth of July, that would give them three cornerback pledges inside of a month. They’ll likely slow things down if that happens, but we’ll ask Texas cornerback Jahari Rogers if he plans on considering Notre Dame moving forward.
You’ll also be able to hear directly from New Jersey linebacker Cody Simon on the current status of his recruitment.
The underclassmen who are invited to The Opening Finals are by definition elite prospects, so it’s no surprise that Notre Dame is already in on a few of them.
The Irish have already extended offers to 2021 Texas offensive lineman Donovan Jackson and 2021 California defensive end Korey Foreman. We’ll work to find out whether they’re considering those offers and if so, how seriously.
2021 Kentucky wide receiver Dekel Crowdus (pictured above) wasn’t a well-known national prospect when he took an unofficial visit to Notre Dame last fall with his teammate and former 2020 Irish offensive line target Walker Parks – now a Clemson commit – but he is now. We’ll ask him if that visit has stayed with him and what the contact with Notre Dame has been since.
And there always seems to be a prospect or two who ends up expressing mutual interest in Notre Dame that wasn’t on the public radar coming into the event, so we’ll poke around on some other targets as well.
We already have a few names in mind, so keep it locked to ISD in the days to come.