Happy St. Patrick's Day and welcome to another episode of Irish Illustrated Insider.

I'm Pete Sampson, joined by Tim O'Malley.

Our third colleague, Tim Priesters, somewhere in Brooklyn, being a hipster, waiting for Notre Ames.

An NCAA tournament tip off Friday night against Michigan.

We're here, Saving Way with Spring Practice.

And, you know, we saw about 30 minutes of the first practice on Wednesday,

talked to Brian Kelly Tuesday and Wednesday,

handful of players Wednesday.

We'll get a chance to talk to the

quarterbacks on Friday, so we'll get into that our next podcast. But I don't know, Tim,

there was maybe no great revelations from the first practice, but I was intrigued to see

the redshirt guys and how they fit in.

And, you know, is there going to be something on the defensive line from those three sophomores?

Where does Barajas fit?

But particularly Asper Bar-Bal, I think, is...

Asper Balao and Sean Crawford, to me, are, like, two of the most interesting guys on the team at any position right now.

And I'm impressed that Crawford got back so quickly because I just assumed with August knee surgery that you've got to lose. I know he was faster than 452 in the past, but 452 and asking Cole Luke about it saying that kid has not lost any of his explosion. He's aggressive. Cole Luke used the word aggressive. That's what we always used last August. He's the smallest kid on the team. He's smaller than Justin Yun. And he is an aggressive, angry football player. And he's, I mean, it's great that he's back this far because without a setback, he'll be fine. Yeah. I mean, even going back to watching that kid as a prospect, he just made every play, whether it be in games or camps, combines, it did not matter.

He was often the best player on the field.

And I really think last year that was the most underrated injury that hit Notre Dame.

Because we didn't, unless you had watched him as a recruit you didn't

really know what he was about but you know privately you talked to people around

the staff and they're like man this was this was a big blow to their defense well

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