Assistant director of strength and conditioning Lorenzo Guess has left Notre Dame for a similar position at his alma mater Michigan State.
Guess, who played basketball and football for the Spartans, hails from Michigan and was coached by Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio when Dantonio was a position coach and Guess was a safety. Dantonio had also hired Guess as a staff assistant when he was the head coach at Cincinnati.
Dantonio had nothing but good things to say about Guess in the school’s official release:“We’re very excited about Lorenzo Guess coming back to Michigan State,” Dantonio said. “A member of our 1997 recruiting class, he was the state’s best all-around athlete, coming out of Wayne Memorial. Lorenzo was a two-sport athlete at Michigan State. I had the opportunity to work with him every day as his position coach and later as one of my graduate assistants (at Cincinnati). He also played for Tom Izzo on some outstanding MSU basketball teams. I remember he closed out his college career with a huge game (career-best 12 tackles) against Fresno State in the 2001 Silicon Valley Bowl.
“As a coach, Lorenzo has been associated with winning programs, at Cincinnati, South Florida and Notre Dame. He’s really a proven commodity. Lorenzo has a tremendous work ethic, and he brings a working knowledge of Ken Mannie’s training program, having been through it himself as a player. In addition, he’s an ideal role model for our student-athletes because he’s already walked in their footsteps.
“When creating this new position, we immediately targeted Lorenzo as a potential candidate. We’re thrilled to have him along with his wife Bianca and daughter Nadia back on campus. He’s an outstanding addition to our program.”
Only in the throws of the offseason does a move like this make news, but Guess was a great asset for the Irish football staff. While there are restrictions on the time players and coaches can spend together in the offseason, the strength and conditioning staff is responsible for the coaching throughout the offseason months, including the summer session. Having a guy like Guess, who coached tight ends for Kelly at Cincinnati and came over to Notre Dame as a strength coach, with a clear knowledge for the game as both a top-flight player and collegiate position coach, helped keep a consistent message between the strength and football staffs.
“It’s awesome to be returning home to Michigan State,” Guess said via the Spartans’ release. “I’ve known Coach Dantonio since he began recruiting me in 1996. He was my position coach at Michigan State, and later, I had an opportunity to work for him at Cincinnati. So my relationship with Coach D certainly played a major role in my decision to return to my alma mater.
“It’s an exciting time to be associated with the Spartan football program. Coach D, his coaching staff and the players have done a great job in bringing the program back to a position of national prominence. I’m really looking forward to this opportunity to work with the coaching staff and student-athletes. I couldn’t be more excited.”
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In the course of one morning news cycle, Notre Dame and Army planned and unplanned a Yankee Stadium reunion for 2013. News out of Army athletic director Boo Corrigan, by way of the Times Herald-Record, had the Irish and Black Knights in the midst of discussing a renewal of the traditional series.
“We’re working through details with the University of Notre Dame on a series,” Corrigan told the Times Herald-Record. “It’s coming in the future. We’re excited about a series that we are going to play with them.”
His explanation on where the game was taking place likely kick-started the rumor mill.
“My place (Michie Stadium), their place (South Bend), the Yankees place, wherever else. We are in the final throes.”
From there, the Chicago Tribune and a number of other media outlets picked up the story, with the highlights being a potential rematch in Yankee Stadium after the successful off-site match-up in new Yankee Stadium’s first football game in 2010.
Notre Dame, who usually remains silent on a schedule until it’s completed, actually felt compelled to kill the rumor before the snowball rolled out of control.
“That was absolutely not true,” Notre Dame associate athletic director John Heisler told Blue & Gold Illustrated. “We are not playing Army in 2013 there or anywhere else.”
The 2013 schedule already looked pretty well formed, making that game next to an impossibility to begin with. The Irish already have Temple, Oklahoma, Arizona State, Air Force and potentially BYU set to join traditional opponents like Michigan, Purdue, Michigan State, Southern Cal, Navy and Stanford, with just a few dates left to be ironed out.
So stick a fork in that rumor, though it’s more than likely a game is in the near future.
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Lastly, while you wouldn’t know it by the pace of Irish recruiting, head coach Brian Kelly underwent back surgery for a herniated disc, according to Irish SID Brian Hardin.
The surgery was performed yesterday and Kelly is expected back and better by August, in plenty of time before Notre Dame opens fall camp.