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I'm Tim Preacher with Tim O'Malley and Pete Sampson.

Nordame is now 9-0 with their 31-21 victory over Northwestern in Evansville Saturday night.

Ian Book on fire in the second half, as Notre Dame emphasized the passing game a little bit more in the second half.

Defense played really well, I think, except when they took a 17-point lead, relaxed a little bit at that point.

But, you know, a good ballgame by Notre Dame.

Obviously, the special teams is not what you're looking for at the end of the game. You'd like to close out an opponent. But Nordame ends up winning by 10 on the road. They're 9-0. They should be number three in a playoff voting this week. And three left, a quarter of the season to go. Book, you mentioned the second half. He's unreal in the second half at this point. I would throw some stats out there, but his completion percentage sounds the same, whether you say first half or second half or not. But something like 68 of 88 in the second half. Yeah, it's just... It's better in the second half. But it's good at the first half, too, though. This is the stat that really, it was like, holy crap. So, really, I would dump Wake Forest and Stanford because there was no... Yeah, I saw you did that, yeah. I was including those two. Yeah, so those are really like game pressure on it on you, but Virginia Tech, there was game pressure, you're up one at half. Pittsburgh, there's definitely game pressure, you're down one at half. And Northwestern is game pressure. You're tied at half. So dump Navy too. Yeah. Yeah. Dump Navy as well. So those three halves, second halves, when, you know, you should tense up. You should have to think about it. Also, you had to adjust to a, not a new game plan, but figure out what Chiplong wants to do and then execute it.

So it's all, it's mentally complicated and just the pressure in those second halfs.

39 to 46 for 505, five touchdowns, one pick.

That completion percentage is actually about 10 points higher than where he is for the season.

His quarterback rating would have been 208.52, which would trail only Kyle Murley and Tua Tawa Lai Laloa. And for the whole second half, including all those games, it's still, Mike Birch put it out there. It's quarterback rating's over 195, which would trail only those guys as well. So he is... He's rising to the occasion, which I think is like, the stats are great.

But I think it's the moments that those stats are happening in is really what's most significant about it.

I mean, he really gets motivated at halftime when he doesn't play well or when he doesn't think that he's performed well.

You know, he comes out smoking. And, you know, I think you have to give

Chiplong credit. We're going to talk about Chiplong's game plan a little bit here because

some people don't think that he took the right approach against Northwestern. But it's definitely

worked for Ian Book. You know, the Nordim run game bogged down a little bit.

Certainly Northwestern was overplaying the run.

And, you know, Nordame ends up, you know, throwing the football.

When you put Nordame in that situation, he and books going over 300 yards easily every time.

You can't defend it all. And he was great again in the second half. I don't think the, I mean, the run game did bog down, but I disagree with the don't run as much thing. I think it's so important to maintain it. Now, if you want to say, oh, there's a couple places where third and 25, you don't have to try to draw to Tony Jones.

I get it if you want to nitpick calls like that.

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