Welcome to Irish Illustrated's tracking the trail.

I'm Drew Mentock, joined by Irish Illustrated Senior Recruiting analyst Eric Thomas.

We'll get to subscriber questions later, but first we're going to discuss

Nardames recruiting weekend, where 18 prospects were on campus, including a name everyone has been curious about.

St. Thomas Aquinas, wide receiver Julius Jones, Jr.

The son of, of course, the former Nordiam running back Julius Jones, but his son is a

wide receiver recruit.

I know he's been pretty tight with Oregon as well, but Narname got him on campus as well

as his younger brother, who's a defensive back prospect in the class of 2028, Andre Jones. Eric,

how did Nardame do with those two prospects who obviously legacy, everyone's interested, and that's

an important recruitment for a wide receiver position that, you know, moves a lot of needles in this day of college football. Yeah, it's, um, it's an important one for Notre Dame. They've, they've really, you know, prioritized Julius Jones. It's like one of the top of the board, regardless of the position targets throughout the course of the cycle. So, you know, heading into the visit, uh, he was in Eugene, Oregon. I think it was on April

4th that Zach Blowstein, our colleague, who covers like the Florida Territory, he put in a

crystal ball pick for Julius to end up with the ducks. Now, he was on campus at that point. He was really

loved on the visit. He was on campus with his brother who Oregon is also recruiting, as you mentioned.

So it was a lot going on. And obviously, I have talked in the past about how Julius is pretty embattled about, you know, do I want to continue the legacy and kind of go that direction? Do I want to strike out and do something on my own? So I think Oregon did a really good job of kind of going after that point of being like, you know, you can build your own legacy. We can do it here. Look how special it's been here. That's kind of a lot of the messaging that they got. But this weekend, Notre Dame got both of them, Julius and Andre, back on campus. And from what I heard, you know, talking to multiple sources from talking to, you know, some folks that I know Zach talked to as

well, Blosina put it in the crystal ball pick. It sounds like Notre Dame at the bare minimum

pulled even with ducks. They may have even pulled ahead for Julius. Now, there's a couple factors in there.

Obviously, I mentioned, you know, Notre Dame offered his brother this weekend. That's a big step for

them to kind of continue, once again,

that family legacy piece. That's really important to them. But beyond that, they really kind of

centered in on a couple other things. Like he got to see practice and see this new look wide

receiver room. And when you look at Julius Jones's game, what he does is like he's a really good separator. He's fast,

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