Good Things Shrewing marks its return tonight, and yet again, our apologies for the inconsistency. I’m optimistic that this week’s shift towards The Barking Crow producing more of these newsletters will help.
Tomorrow, Notre Dame will complete its athletic year over in Eugene, Oregon, where Olivia Markezich (3K steeplechase), Sophie Novak (3K steeplechase), and Siona Chisholm (5K) all have yet to compete at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships. As we head into the summer months, then, let’s go through all 23 Notre Dame seasons, ranking them from worst to best.
These rankings are subjective, but they consider…
- Conference performance
- Overall regular season performance
- National performance (adjusted for how many universities sponsor the sport in Division I)
- Short-term expectations
- Long-term expectations
- Each sport’s role within Notre Dame’s athletic department
Again, this is very subjective, and I am not an expert on a decent number of these sports. But this is where things seemed to stand this year, in terms of how pleasing or disappointing each season was.
23. Volleyball
This fall marked Salima Rockwell’s second season in South Bend, and we understand that rebuilds take time, with second years sometimes tougher than first years due to differing transfer incentives for rising juniors than rising seniors. We’re not unhappy with Rockwell. It’s just rough to see Notre Dame at the bottom of the ACC and uncompetitive nationally in an increasingly premier college sport. The roster was young, but as with men’s basketball, that doesn’t guarantee improvement. It can help, but it’s not a guarantee.
22. Baseball
Another program near the bottom of the ACC, though in the team’s defense, the ACC is good at baseball. Another second-year coach here (Shawn Stiffler), so no complaints with how the program is run, but Notre Dame can’t let its baseball get this bad. Baseball is too important, and we’re not in the Big Ten, where it’s historically been a conference afterthought.
21. Women’s Golf
I believe the women’s golf team was the only one at Notre Dame to finish last in the ACC, as another second-year coach (Caroline Powers Ellis) faced a lot of challenges. I will say: Women’s golf isn’t particularly prominent, and it’s not a sport where Notre Dame is naturally built to excel. The school’s affinity for country clubs should show up more in tennis, where climate is less a factor. Last place is rough. But of all the sports at Notre Dame, reasonable expectations for golf might be the lowest.
20. Hockey
Finishing fifth out of seven Big Ten teams isn’t embarrassing or anything, but for how much Notre Dame’s invested in hockey, how strong of NHL prospects Notre Dame can command, and how proven the program is, a third missed NCAA Tournament in five years is frustrating. Hockey isn’t as prominent nationally as baseball or volleyball, but it’s something Notre Dame supports more heavily than those sports, and these last two years, the results didn’t match the support.
19. Men’s Basketball
It was an up-and-down debut for our guy Micah Shrewsberry, and the team put together some good basketball in conference play. We’ll talk more about the offseason below, but it was a fine first year for a man who inherited a decrepit cupboard.
18. Softball
Tough final year for Deanna Gumpf, though not one that will harm her legacy in the slightest. Softball ranking so low here is mostly a testament to how well the program always otherwise performed under her leadership.
17. Men’s Tennis
A very medium season for men’s tennis, who didn’t finish far from early-season expectations but created fairly low early-season expectations. There isn’t a lot of momentum around men’s tennis right now, but hopefully Sebastian Dominko can change that next year.
16. Rowing
The rowing team didn’t lose any ground from their finish last year, again placing fourth at the ACC Championships, but they missed nationals for what appears to be the sixth straight season. I don’t know if rowing is getting better nationally or if Notre Dame is getting worse, but the results aren’t what they were a decade ago.
15. Men’s Track & Field
Track’s a hard one for Notre Dame in the same way that it’s difficult for the football program to land five-stars. In sports most dependent on raw physical gifts, Notre Dame enjoys fewer advantages than in sports with a positive correlation between academic and athletic performance. It’s not that track athletes are dumb. I don’t think the academic/athletic correlation is negative for track. That correlation just isn’t positive the way it is with lacrosse (because money correlates with academic performance and lacrosse opportunities) or even distance running (because the sport is so mental).
Anyway, 52nd at nationals is fine–not–great.
14. Women’s Track & Field
The women’s team should get a stronger finish than the men when the points are tallied up tomorrow night, and tying for third in the ACC is a strong showing. From this point on, the list gets pretty good.
13. Women’s Swimming & Diving
Notre Dame got back to scoring points at nationals this year, finishing 32nd in the country thanks to Caroline Brady placing in the 3-meter dive. They also, importantly, sent more swimmers and divers to nationals than they did last year, as Chris Lindauer and Mark Bradshaw continue to program-build in the aquatics center.
12. Fencing
Yes, the fencing team finished second in the country. But Notre Dame devotes more resources to fencing than any other major athletic department, and there are fewer than 30 Division I fencing programs, making a second-place finish similar to a top-ten finish in more common sports. Credit to the fencing program for making anything less than a national championship a disappointment, but it was a disappointment. If we’re going to be a fencing school, we should expect to win the championship every single year.
11. Women’s Tennis
It was a nice spring for the women’s tennis team, who to my recollection did not face positive expectations this winter. They reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament and finished in the middle of the ACC. Not bad.
10. Men’s Golf
Similarly to women’s tennis and women’s swimming & diving, the men’s golf team made it onto the national stage, and we’ll take that.
9. Football
Football will always be the most controversial ranking in a list like this, but a top-15 team with stronger predictive ratings in a coach’s second year is very, very good. The Louisville loss was bad, and the Clemson loss was bad, and the Ohio State loss remains haunting. But it was a good team that showed signs of getting better, and it beat the shit out of USC, starting the downfall that kept Caleb Williams from ever earning mention as an all-time college great.
8. Women’s Lacrosse
There are a lot more D-I women’s lacrosse teams than men’s lacrosse teams, and expectations should be adjusted accordingly. Still, you can’t get upset by Michigan in the NCAA Tournament. Everything else was positive, but that was a bad thing to do.
7. Women’s Soccer
Another team who finished its season with an upset loss, but they reached the round of 16 and were seeded to reach the quarterfinals, which is very good.
6. Men’s Cross Country
Notre Dame distance running is encouraging. 14th in the country is a good result.
5. Women’s Basketball
This is where the list turns to only success. No negatives beyond this point. No, Niele Ivey’s team didn’t make the Final Four (or the Elite Eight), but they held their own nationally in a highly competitive year of women’s hoops, Hannah Hidalgo was everything she was advertised to be, and the team didn’t blink when injuries piled up. Great year, great program, great successor to Muffet McGraw.
4. Men’s Swimming & Diving
The men’s swimming and diving team earned its first ever top-ten finish nationally and finished second in the ACC (which is the best athletic conference in the country once you remove the big-money sports). Great year for these guys. Very exciting time for the program. Lindauer and Bradshaw are respectively only in their second and third year.
3. Women’s Cross Country
Again, the distance running is encouraging. A top-five finish at nationals is remarkable.
2. Men’s Soccer
It could have been two national championships at Notre Dame this year (or three, if fencing had done its job), but we aren’t going to be unhappy with a soccer team for coming up one goal short. It’s not easy to be good at college soccer, and Notre Dame continues to be very good.
1. Men’s Lacrosse
They got the job done, and with authority. Credit to the program. (The bagpipe thing is cool, too. We hate on Notre Dame lacrosse a lot, but more sports should adopt the bagpipe tradition.)
Quick(er) Hitters
Losing Carey Booth hurts. We can’t talk about the men’s basketball offseason without leading with that. Matt Allocco is a great pickup, coming over from Princeton, and should thrive as an offensive weapon under Shrewsberry (expect absolutely nothing from this man on the defensive end of the court). Nikita Konstantynovskyi provides a necessary second big man, coming over from Monmouth, although rebounding in power conference basketball is different from rebounding in the CAA. Similarly, Burke Chebuhar will probably be physically overmatched at times coming over from Lehigh, but he’s a body, and he fills out the scholarship count.
Next year’s success is going to hinge on development, and development is never a promise. “They’re bringing back a lot of minutes” doesn’t help if the minutes were bad. The correlation between continuity and improvement is weak. That said, what made us so high on Micah Shrewsberry last summer was how much promise he brings in the realm of maximizing offensive efficiency and developing offensive players. It’s still a bad enough situation that if Notre Dame’s around the bubble, it will have been a successful step forward. But a winning ACC record is a reasonable wish, especially with the new conference additions not particularly inspiring (although you shouldn’t sleep on Cal under Mark Madsen).
On the football side, Notre Dame added Boise State to the 2025 schedule this week. It’s a good depth game, likely similar to Purdue in its difficulty but a nice step up from the two MAC opponents and Army this fall. It’s possible there’ll still be a MAC or FCS opponent added to the schedule, but Notre Dame doesn’t have to worry as much about undefeated seasons as it did in the four-team playoff era, especially if the rule about needing a conference championship to earn a bye remains in place. Overall, schedule strength might matter more while going undefeated will matter less. Anyway, expect a lot of blue in the crowd that weekend. Remember how well Utah traveled in 2010?
