Longtime fan Cave proud to be part of Notre Dame's resurgence

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SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Braxston Cave has seen the good and bad of senior day over his five seasons at Notre Dame. The nadir for most would be 2008's infamous snowball game, where students pelted Notre Dame players on the sidelines with snow as the Irish lost to Syracuse.

But for Cave, perhaps the low point came last year on senior day, when he was relegated to the sidelines thanks to a foot injury suffered two weeks before against Wake Forest. After the game, Cave joined Jonas Gray -- who tore his ACL during Notre Dame's win over Boston College -- on crutches. When the alma mater concluded, Cave wasn't reveling in the atmosphere. He was dreading what could've been his final experience as a player at Notre Dame Stadium.

"You never know -- you plan on coming back for your fifth year, but Notre Dames different so you gotta go through the whole process," Cave said Wednesday. "You dont really know if that was going to be the last time. And for me, on crutches was definitely not a way I wanted to go out."

Cave, a native of Granger, Ind., and alumni of Penn High School in nearby Mishawaka, grew up an ardent supporter of Notre Dame. That means watching as a fan through the good times (2002, 2005, 2006) and the bad (2007) before coming to South Bend. That 2007 season was interesting, since Cave committed to Notre Dame the spring before the Irish won just three games.

"Hopefully Im going to play early," Cave laughed when asked about his thoughts watching that season. "Every freshman wants to play early, but I think the biggest thing was that made our recruiting class bond together even more, because we knew with the group we had we could do something special."

But that success didn't come early. Notre Dame went 7-6 in 2008 and 6-6 in 2009, with Charlie Weis being ousted after Cave's sophomore year. The noise became so loud that Cave deleted his Facebook, doing everything possible to avoid the prying questions about why Notre Dame wasn't good.

They were the same questions, though, Cave was asking himself.

"Like that guy who sits at home and throws his remote at the TV, that was me," Cave said. "A lot of anger, you question if youre not working hard enough, if theres something more that you can do. Theres so many different things that go through your head, because instantly you want to blame it on yourself, then you gotta go back and remember its a team sport and kind of get everybody back on the same page working toward a common goal."

Eight wins in 2010 represented a step forward, but after another eight-win season in 2011 the perception was that Notre Dame was spinning its wheels. All Cave could do was watch for the final four games of last season from a pair of crutches, not knowing if he'd be able to accomplish what he set out to do four years prior.

But with a 10-0 record and chance at a BCS Championship berth, Cave's final season with Notre Dame is shaping up to be just what he had hoped to accomplish.

"My goal coming here was to get things back to the glory days and the way theyre supposed to be," Cave said. "I feel like weve done a good job of finally doing that."

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