Notre Dame defeats Georgia in the Allstate Sugar Bowl 23-10 to advance to the CFB Playoff semifinal

Just like that the quarterfinal matchups in the College Football Playoffs have officially come to a close. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish, led by head coach Marcus Freeman and quarterback Riley Leonard defeat the Georgia Bulldogs 23-10 in the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

The Fighting Irish are advancing to the semifinals of the College Football Playoffs after a dominating performance in the Sugar Bowl against the Georgia Bulldogs.

“I am so proud of this program, the team for the work they put in to obtain the result that we got tonight,” head coach Marcus Freeman said. “I had to remind them the last 10 days as we prepared that this will be a 60 plus minute fight. Georgia has been down in nine games this year and they find a way to come back and win. They had that mentality.”

Leonard finished the game with 154 passing yards, a touchdown through the air and even added 80 yards on the ground earning him Sugar Bowl’s offensive most valuable player.

“That is my mindset going into every game, like, everybody else is going to put their body on the line so I am going to do it right there with them,” Leonard said. “It was going to be a physical matchup. Our number one key to victory was control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball and that is exactly what we did. We knew if we could establish ourselves upfront we were going to have a chance at this thing. They are a very physical group and they brought a lot of pressure today but I think we handled it pretty well.”

In a week that was filled with chaos, coach Freeman and his players are proud of their win in New Orleans and are looking forward to competing in the next round of the College Football Playoffs.

“I told them this morning that there are things in life that are unpredictable,” Freeman said. “The ability to handle the unpredictable things determined their success. They handled this incident, this change, they handle everything that is thrown at them in an unbelievable way.”

Notre Dame advances to the next round to take on a Big Ten opponent in the Penn State Nittany Lions on January 9th at 6:30 in the Orange Bowl.