A Tale of Two Teams

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. The Notre Dame football squad is horrific and has lost to Navy for the first time since John Fitzgerald Kennedy was president. Meanwhile, the basketball team, victorious over Saint Ambrose in their openenr, seems positioned for a great season in 2007-2008.

The biggest difference between the two teams is experience. The football team has very little, which has been well documented on sites such as ND Nation. The Irish have played a school record number of freshmen and sophomores and have youngsters playing in every unit. Charlie Weis has had a rough row to hoe this year.

Meanwhile, the basketball program is a very deep team that returns four starters in Luke Harongody, Rob Kurz, Tory Jackson, and Kyle MacAlarney. Their experience goes so deep that no freshmen played in the exhibition game until the ninth player, Tyrone Nash, entered the contest. This was in a game in which Harongody was out with an injury, which accentuates how deep the cager's depth actually goes.

Will the basketball team fair better than their fall counterparts? That remains to be seen, but Mike Brey's recruiting and guidance has put the team in a position to succeed. That is much more than could consistently be said for the football program over the past five years.