T.J. Tynan wins Rookie of the Year

 

Notre Dame freshman center T.J. Tynan was named the College Hockey News’ Rookies of the Year on Tuesday. Tynan edged out his teammate Anders Lee and two other finalists to capture the honor.

While the College Hockey News award likely will pale in comparison to a couple of victories at the Frozen Four next, it is certainly nice for Tynan to have some hardware in the back after a very deserving freshman campaign. The Orland Park, Ill. native leads the Irish in points this season with 51 and was second only to Lee in goals scored with 22. Lee currently has 24 goal including two — one of which was an overtime game winner — last weekend in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.

Tynan, who is undrafted for now, joined the Notre Dame team a year earlier than expected and has provided the team with an offensive spark since Day One. He played for the USHL’s Des Moines Bucaneers for a year before coming to South Bend.

The College Hockey News is one of the leading (and only) authorities on college hockey and is home to some of the more respected college hockey journalists. They have been naming rookies of the year for well over a decade, but Tynan is the first player from Notre Dame to earn the honor. Between him, Lee and the 10 other freshman on Notre Dame’s current roster it looks like the future of Irish hockey is bright.

In the much more immediate future, Notre Dame will take on Minnesota-Duluth in the Frozen Four semifinals at 5 p.m. on April 7. The game, being held in St. Paul, Minn., will be the third time in a row that the Irish will face a hostile crowd despite the so-called “neutral sites” of the NCAA Tournament. This is the second time in the past four years that Notre Dame has advanced to the Frozen Four. The Irish lost to Boston College in the championship game in 2008.

Irish are Final Four bound

You know what they say, the 21st time is the charm.

The Notre Dame women’s basketball team went into tonight’s Elite 8 match-up with Tennessee 0 for their last 20 against the Vols and their legendary head coach Pat Summitt. But the Irish were able to pull out a win when it counted most and are now headed to the Final Four with a convincing 73-59 win.

“We went into the locker room after the game and the first thing the team said was, ’1 and 20! 1 and 20!’” Irish coach Muffet McGraw said to reporters after the win.

McGraw’s second-seeded team pulled off the upset thanks to a stellar performance from hometown hero Skylar Diggins. Diggins finished the game with 24 points followed Natalie Novosel (17) and the equally alliterative Becca Bruszewski (13).

The Irish took a five-point lead into the half. The Vols were able to pull within one to start the second, but a pair of clutch 3′s from Diggins gave her team a little bit of breathing room. Notre Dame rolled from there never giving up the lead in the half. They were ahead for more than 37 minutes of the 40 minute game.

It doesn’t get any easier for McGraw and her team in Indianapolis. They will likely face UConn (who faces Duke in its regional final game Tuesday night) in their next game on Sunday. The Huskies beat Notre Dame in all three of their meetings this season.

Monday night’s win capped one of the most successful sports weekends in recent Notre Dame memory. After hitting lows with the men’s team being upset and Michael Floyd’s arrest last week, the Irish bounced back with a women’s trip to the final four, the hockey team reaching the Frozen Four with a win over UNH Sunday night, big wins from the men’s and women’s lacrosse programs and a national championship from the fencing team. It was definitely a good weekend to be gold and blue, through and through.

Irish claim another national title

Notre Dame notched its second national championship of the school year Sunday afternoon as the fencing team held off Penn State during the final day of competition in Columbus, Ohio.

The sword-Fighting Irish have won the second most national championships as any team on campus with eight trophies in the past 35 years. The titles came in 1977, ’78, ’86, ’87, ’94, 2003, ’05 and now 2011. The last three championships have all come under the tutelage of head coach Janusz Bednarski. Bednarski has made his teams into perennial contenders for the better part of the past decade.

Notre Dame’s first national champion in the 2010-11 school year came when the women’s soccer team knocked off Stanford for their third title in program history.

This year it was freshman foiler Rachel Beck who iced the victory with a 3-2 overtime victory over her opponent from Harvard.

Junior Courtney Hurley also knocked off one of Harvard’s sword-fighting beekeepers to win her first career individual gold medal.Hurley went 19-4 in the competition before winning an 8-7 decision over Noam Mills in the finals. If that name sounds familiar to you, you probably are a little too into collegiate fencing. Nonetheless, it is because Courtney’s sister Kelley also won an individual championship for the Irish in 2008.

 

 

On the men’s side, freshman Ariel DeSmet won Notre Dame’s only other individual gold medal in the men’s foil on Friday night. DeSmet continued a streak of ending his season on top after winning four straight state championship titles at Reynolds High School in Oregon.

 

Irish start Frozen Four tonight

The NCAA Frozen Four hockey tournament is also in its Sweet 16 mode this weekend. Notre Dame, a 3-seed in the Northeast Regional, will take on second-seeded Merrimack in New Hampshire tonight.

 

The Irish (23-13-5) finished the regular season ranked No. 8 in the nation despite a disappointing finish at the CCHA Tournament in Joe Louis Arena last weekend. Notre Dame gave up 10 goals in back-to-back losses to Miami and Michigan to finish in fourth place of the conference tournament and likely dropped to a three-seed in the national tournament because of it.

They will take on Merrimack College tonight from North Andover, Mass. The Warriors (25-9-4) made a statement during the highly-contested Hockey East tournament by knocking off UNH and Maine before losing to Boston College in the championship game.

Boston College was the first major upset of the tournament last night. The Eagles — a 1-seed in the West bracket — gave up 8 goals to Colorado College and were eliminated with an 8-4 loss. Another traditional hockey powerhouse, Michigan, narrowly avoided being upset as well. The Wolverines trailed 2-0 early against Nebraska-Omaha before a controversial overtime goal moved them into the Elite Eight.

If Notre Dame wins tonight, they will take on the winner of the Miami-New Hampshire game also being played today. The RedHawks are the No. 1 seed in the region, but have to take on UNH less than 10 miles from the school’s campus.

Tonight’s Notre Dame game will be televised in New England and in South Bend. It is also available on ESPN3.com where you can catch almost all of the tournament games this weekend.

Early enrollees impress in debut

Notre Dame coaches and scribes got their first look at what they hope will be the next batch of future Irish stars when spring practice opened Wednesday morning. By all accounts, the five freshman who enrolled for spring ball this semester lived up to the billing at least in first impressions.

Most reporters on the scene got hung up on the miniature camera attached to the side of Dayne Crist‘s helmet. The helmet cam, which dominated Notre Dame headlines Wednesday evening, is designed to allow coaches to see if the quarterback is properly going through his progressions. This technology wowed many who said it could usher in “a new era in Notre Dame  spring football practices” and who apparently missed the past 15 years of sports television. The helmet cam was around during the 1996 NHL All-Star Game, around the same time – as you can tell from this video – as the primitive Fox sports robots and, yes, the infamous glow puck experiment.

But I digress, back to the early enrollees and how they fared in Wednesday morning practice… (more…)

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