Too Much Lost, Too Little Received

Derrell Hand has been diagnosed with a hereditary spinal cord disease, and his career is over. This is very bad news for everyone involved. Hand has lost his career, but he is lucky in a few ways for things leading up to this illness. Hand was arrested for propositioning a prostitute last spring and was suspended for 3 games. We saw Kyle McAlarney, the junior point guard on the b-ball team, get booted for a semester for marijuana possession. Hand is lucky that Charlie had faith in Hand and let him stay. Now he will have a degree to fall back on. Speaking of that...

When Hand was being recruited, he was looking at colleges (Miami of Florida for instance) that have much lower academic standards than Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, he will get a real degree, not whatever you would get at Florida State while playing football. This is why Notre Dame holds players to higher standards. They need a fall back career.

Bartley Webb, an offensive lineman, also has a career ending injury. He hurt his shoulder and is done. To go along with Pat Kuntz disappearing and being found at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, Notre Dame is losing too many players.

With Omar Hunter's decommitment, they may not have enough experience or talent to replace them. The defensive line is already very thin. Dwight Stephenson and Trevor Laws have graduated. Justin Brown and Ian Williams are the main players left. Hopefully Pat Kuntz can come back and play this year so the weakness is reduced.