Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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UNDER THE DOME Dame has yet to miss a trip to the NCAA Tournament. In her first 11 seasons, she has collected six Big East regular-season titles, four conference championships and the best winning percentage (.705) of any current coach in the league. The La Palma, Calif., native served as an assistant coach at Notre Dame for three years before taking over the head job. The Notre Dame monogram club surprised Gumpf by making her one of its honorary members last fall after the Irish finished the 2011 season with a 46-11 record. As she and her team geared up to start the regular season on Feb. 17, Gumpf joined Blue & Gold Illustrated to talk about her expectations for the season ahead. mean to you to be inducted into the Monogram Club this fall? Gumpf: "It's a huge honor, and it was Blue & Gold Illustrated: What did it completely unexpected. It threw me for a loop. It's a special honor, and I'm a part of a unique group of people who have been an amazing part of Notre Dame history. "It's very special; it means the world to me. Coming this year, with my team and having a lot of my alumni there, it was really special to me." coaches picked Notre Dame to finish third in the conference this year. Is that where you expected to be? Gumpf: "It's fine where they put us Blue & Gold Illustrated: The Big East In her first 11 seasons in charge, Gumpf has produced six Big East regular-season titles, four conference cham- pionships and the best winning percentage (.705) of any current coach in the league. because everybody in the country sees that we graduated our experience and that's fine with me. As everybody knows it's not really where you start. … If you look at the experience of our team, out of the nine positions we'll have five new starters on the field. "It's a lot, and I think this team is doing PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME MEDIA RELATIONS a great job of filling the shoes of what we lost last year." Blue & Gold Illustrated: Do you worry about having that much inexperience on the field going into a season? Gumpf: "Being inexperienced makes me even more excited. I feel like we're going to catch some people off balance a little bit. People don't know how to scout us yet. "We're a brand-new team. … They know that we're going to be tough, they just don't know where Big East and NCAA tournaments early. What went wrong in the postseason? Gumpf: "With the NCAAs, quite frankly, we should have gone further than we did with the talent that we had. We learned from our mistakes and we'll try to get better in some of the areas that hurt us in the past. "But this is such a different team that the issues that we dealt with last year are completely different this year." Blue & Gold Illustrated: One of the tough realities of playing in the North is you start the year with 25 consecutive away games. Is that a big disadvantage for your team? Gumpf: "It seems like it's a disadvantage, but I kind of like being on the road a lot, especially earlier because you learn how to win on the road. The way that the NCAAs are, you aren't guaranteed to host. "It's important that you learn to win on the road. We've become pretty good at that. It becomes not such a big deal. For other people it could be, it's just not for us." 10 MARCH 2012 Under head coach Deanna Gumpf, who will start her 12th year as the Irish skipper this month, Notre NOTRE DAME SOFTBALL COACH DEANNA GUMPF Five Questions With … Jan. 22 at age 85, joined Penn State's foot- ball staff as an assistant in 1950, Notre Dame head coach Frank Leahy was coming off four straight unbeaten seasons with the Irish. Since becoming the head coach of the When the late Joe Paterno, who died ✦ GIMME FIVE Nittany Lions in 1966, Paterno had seen nine Notre Dame head coaches come and go, from Ara Parseghian (1964-74) to cur- rent boss Brian Kelly, and it includes George O'Leary's four-day tenure in December 2001. It wasn't until his 11th season as Penn State's head coach that Paterno had his first encounter against Notre Dame, a 20-9 loss in the 1976 Gator Bowl to head coach Dan Devine's Irish. The two indepen- dent powers that combined for six national titles and seven unbeaten campaigns in the 23 years from 1966-88 met every season from 1981-92 before the rivalry was interrupted when Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1993. Paterno's Nittany Lions were 6-1 against JOE PATERNO the Irish from 1981-87, repeatedly winning the close encounters: 24-21 (1981), 34-30 (1983), 24-19 (1986) and 21-20 (1987). Head coach Lou Holtz's juggernaut Irish won decisively in 1988 (21-3) and 1989 (34-23), but in 1990 Penn State won yet an- other close one, rallying from a 21-7 deficit to upset 8-1 and No. 1 Notre Dame, 24-21, on a field goal in the closing seconds. Finally, in 1992, the Irish ended Penn we're coming from yet. I like that." Blue & Gold Illustrated: You finished the 2011 season 17-1 in conference, but bowed out of both the State's streak of winning the nail-biters with a 17-16 victory at home in the Snow Bowl, with quarterback Rick Mirer finding fullback Jerome Bettis for a touchdown on fourth down and then connecting with tailback Reggie Brooks on a two-point play with 20 seconds remaining. The two most recent meetings in the se- ries were blowouts, first by the Irish in 2006 (41-17) and then Penn State in 2007 (31-10). Paterno's 15 games against Notre Dame 3t. Joe Paterno (Penn St.) 1976-2011 9-6 3t. Howard Jones (USC) — Dan Murphy 1. D. Daugherty (Mich. St.) 1954-72 10-7-1 2. John McKay (USC) Coach (School) 5. J. Mollenkopf (Purdue) 1956-69 10-4 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED Years Record 1960-75 8-6-2 1926-40 6-8-1 are tied for third place among football coaches. Here are the top five and their records: