Luke Harangody Named 2nd Team All American

Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody was named a 2nd Team All American on Monday.  He was 6th in the voting – just missing making first team status.

According to the Notre Dame release, Luke is the 9th Notre Dame bballer to be named to the AP’s All American team.

The eight other Notre Dame players who have earned AP All-America include three-time honoree Kevin O’Shea (1948, 1949 and 1950), Tom Hawkins (1958 and 1959), Austin Carr (1970 and 1971), John Shumate (1974), Adrian Dantley (1975 and 1976), Kelly Tripucka (1979), Pat Garrity (1998) and Troy Murphy (2000 and 2001).

Three players have earned honorable mention recognition — Matt Carroll (2003), Chris Thomas (2003 and 2004) and Chris Quinn (2006).

I also came across this interesting piece when looking for news on Luke tonight.  He wrote a diary entry for the NWI Times last week after ND’s loss to Washington State in the 2nd round of the tournament.

The first thing I said to our strength and conditioning coach, Tony Rolinki, when I entered the locker room after the game was “back to work.” I feel that there is so much of my game that I can improve on if I am going to help the team next year. As satisfying as this season was for me personally, I know that I can help this team even more by getting better in several areas.

You have to love an attitude like that.  He struggled in the tournament but you gotta love that his first words were “back to work.”  It’s pretty rare for a conference player of the year like Harnagody to be thinking that and not “where will I get drafted?” when he walks into the locker room after a tourney loss.

Congrats Luke, and here is to an even better season in 2008-09.