Two Days Away: No. 7 Miami vs. No. 3 Notre Dame
By David Villavicencio
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Two more days.
The highly-anticipated matchup between No. 3 Notre Dame (8-1) and No. 7 Miami (8-0, 6-0 ACC) kicks off at 8 p.m., Saturday from Hard Rock Stadium, but the excitement surrounding the game has been building for weeks.
“We’re focused on doing our job right now,” Miami head coach Mark Richt said. “We’re in this thing. We know it’s a big deal. It’s ok to be excited about it. Excitement brings adrenaline to me and if we have adrenaline that’s going to help us and if our fans are there to do their thing, which I know they will, that’s going to add to the adrenaline and help us play harder longer. I’m not going to act like this is just another day, it’s not just another day, it’s at the end of the year, playing in a super meaningful game against a great team and I know our fans are going to be jacked up to do it. We’re happy.”
The Hurricanes enter the weekend with the longest active winning streak in FBS at 13 games, while the Fighting Irish have won seven straight games and sit third in the College Football Playoff rankings.
“It’s a great matchup,” Miami offensive coordinator Thomas Brown said. “Two great football teams that take great pride in their programs. Both teams will play physical and they play a great solid football on both sides of the ball. They’re kind of in your face, attack you directly downhill offensively and defensively, so we have to match that intensity and match that physicality, as well.”
While both teams have combined to go 16-1 in 2017, many would say the Hurricanes and Fighting Irish have been two of the biggest surprises in college football this season.
A year ago, Notre Dame struggled through its worst season in a decade. The Fighting Irish finished 4-8 and were under .500 for the first time since going 3-9 in 2007. Prior to the 2016 campaign, Notre Dame had won at least eight games in all six seasons under head coach Brian Kelly.
Richt’s inaugural season at the helm of the Hurricanes got off to an impressive 4-0 start. But the Canes fell to 4-4 before rattling off five straight victories to close the season, including an impressive win over No. 16 West Virginia in the Russell Athletic Bowl. Miami’s last loss came on Oct. 29 at Notre Dame and that is not forgotten among Hurricane players.
“At the end of the day, we came up short,” wide receiver Braxton Berrios said of last year’s matchup. “We learned a lot of things last year, a lot of things about ourselves. I think this team is completely different than last year’s team, as we’ve proven. We take it with a grain of salt. Last year is last year, it’s not going to help us win this game and it’s not going to help them win this game. We learned our lessons and we moved on from that.”
Notre Dame comes to Miami with a potent offense, especially in the running game. The Fighting Irish are seventh nationally in scoring offense (41.3) and rank fifth in rushing offense (324.8). Notre Dame is also 13th overall, averaging 495.1 yards per game offensively.
“We’re very conscious of it,” Berrios said of Notre Dame’s ability to score. “We understand that whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins. Our defense has done a tremendous job, especially in the past few games of if we can’t get it going early – they really keep us in it until we do. We understand that can’t happen. They’re going to make some plays, they’re a good ball team. The offense really has to jump out and we have to get started like we did last week.”
Miami’s defense has been strong, allowing just 5.5 yards per attempt, and a 98.34 opposing passer rating. Turnovers have bee a point of emphasis, and the Canes are averaging 1.63 interceptions per game, and sacking opposing quarterbacks 3.5 times per game, all of which are in the top five nationally. Miami is the only team in the country in the top five of all four of those statistical categories and only Michigan is up there in three of the four.
A week ago against Virginia Tech, the Canes held the Hokies to 10 points and 299 yards of total offense. Miami also had four sacks, eight tackles for loss, and forced four turnovers to help earn a 28-10 victory.
“Every week what you say to yourself is ‘what is the best way to utilize our personnel to defeat this team,'” Miami defensive coordinator Manny Diaz said. “Because the challenge is different every week, that’s the great thing about college football, you face all kinds of offenses. This week is a new challenge, we will try to disperse our guys in the best way possible to stop Notre Dame.”
Hurricanes’ quarterback Malik Rosier will look to spark Miami’s offense early, as the redshirt junior anticipates a back and forth battle between two strong teams.
“They have a good offense but if you see our defense, they play lights out,” Rosier said. “I think it’s going to be a great defensive battle kind of like it was last week. We just have to come out and execute. Can’t have as many turnovers as we had and we just have to make sure we put our defense in a great situation.”
The Canes fed off an electric atmosphere a week ago against Virginia Tech and will look to use that home field advantage again this weekend when Notre Dame comes to Hard Rock Stadium.
“I think that what we all saw last Saturday night is that Saturday nights in Miami are hard on the road team,” Diaz said. [There was a] critical fourth down in the third quarter that might have decided the game, Virginia Tech is going to fake a speed sweep and throw a guy in the flat and they get the snap mechanics wrong, it hits the guy, it’s a fumble, we stop them and go down and score to make it 21-10 and race on to win from there. The crowd had a major impact on that play. If it was down to one play, that might be the play that wins the game. Of course, [the fans] were important on more than one play, so I think we are starting to get that feel of having a big-time home field advantage.”
The energy in the stands is a small part of the aura surrounding the Hurricanes. Miami entered the season with expectations for an exciting year and has delivered so far in 2017.
“There’s a buzz, there’s an excitement around Miami football again that we haven’t seen in a while,” senior wide receiver Braxton Berrios said. “Miami might not be exactly where we want it to be yet, but we’re on that path. Especially as seniors who’ve been here and been through a lot of these things. It feels great to start this path, and start this tradition, and lay this foundation for all the generations to come.”
