If you have been paying attention to recruiting at all in the last few weeks, then you already know Notre Dame has been riding a rainbow roller coaster of emotion. Decommitments late in the process have the ability to stall and forever damage a class. The decommitments of Ronald Darby and Taylor Decker looked like they had the ability to kill any hope or momentum in this class as we get closer to National Signing Day. All was dark…
And then out of the darkness arose a knight in shining armor and carrying a unicorn horn as his weapon- Gunner Kiel committed to Notre Dame. Oh you beautiful nephew of a Blair. Add that with the fact that some guy named “Tosh” is changing his employment, and now we got the makings of a good stew!
Let’s find out what we’re dealing with:
Because this whole recruiting thing changes about every other hour, I’ll make this as simple and brief as possible. We are NOT getting Shaq Thompson, so I won’t even discuss that shit. So what’s left?
Notre Dame is sitting on 82 scholarships for 2012. The NCAA limit is of course 85. Of these 82, 5 of them are 5th Year Seniors:
- John Goodman
- Kapron Lewis-Moore
- Braxston Cave
- Mike Golic Jr.
- Jamoris Slaughter
Because of the recent Goodman news, I have to believe that there is only one player from the list of 5 that may not be invited back; Golic. So, basically that means Notre Dame has 3-4 spots available. That was easy enough- now let’s see the candidates for these last spots:
- Arik Armstead DE/OL
- Armond Armstead (USC Transfer) DE
- Ronald Darby CB
- Yuri Wright CB
- Nelson Agholor WR
- Bryce Treggs WR
- Josh Garnett OL
- Ken Ekanem LB
- Anthony Standifer CB
- Davonte Neal WR
While there may be other names in place, these are all players with offers in hand- and probably the most likely on Notre Dame’s board to give their commitments to ND. Treggs is on this list, but I was hesitant. Treggs has been a SOLID Cal commit for some time, but due to some attrition of Cal’s staff, he may have second thoughts and he really liked Notre Dame.
The Armstead Brothers and Yuri Wright are probably the most likely candidates to full the last 3 spots, and if that does happen, then I still think ND takes a 4th player from this list and Golic will not be back in 2012.
If the Armsteads head elsewhere, that certainly opens up the spots. We can only really speculate on snippets of information at this point. In the end, Brian Kelly is a guy who always wants an 85 man roster, and we hear of a few new official offers in another week.
Brian Kelly showed last year that he was a closer. Can he do it again this year?
