I think the NIU loss was a great asset, in hindsight. He seems to have learned how to mentally get the team ready for every challenge and a killer mindset.
Hiring good assistants is key, and he seems to have gotten that down. Not to mention his recruiting acumen.
Yes, he still has room for improvement, but if you look at the strides he's taken, it's really a great sign.
A coach who is intelligent, passionate, committed and willing to learn from mistakes is invaluable. We've got all that in Marcus Freeman.
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And aside from the NIU debacle, beating teams by margins top teams win by.
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g Estime, Stanford 2 years ago…he’s learning but we’ll see how the playoffs go, assuming ND gets in.
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He's making fewer and fewer mistakes. He'll never be perfect as of course no coach is, but he's progressing very impressively.
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To getting freeman to improve so I am not sure I give freeman a thumbs up just yet. He has a way to go in game management
it's way, way too early to be declaring Freeman a success at this point. His longest win streak is 7 games (and counting) and he has one of the worst losses (if not the worst) in Notre Dame's entire history.
I like where the needle is trending, but too soon to call on him at this point.
Rock losing to Carnegie Tech was a whopper as well.
NIU is definitely in the mix, though.
I like to think that the NIU loss was the jumping the shark moment for MF. He seems at his pressers to be serious and focused ever since. IMHO, he's maturing with every game. Every gray hair and every wrinkle on his face is a tribute to what he's trying to do here at ND. He was put in a very tough spot when he was hired. He didn't have a Grand Valley State experience to fall back on. He has a really good support staff around him. Let's see what happens. The 2024 schedule has really helped.
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