Sam Hartman describes the message in Notre Dame's locker room after tough loss

Notre Dame lost to Ohio State in heartbreaking fashion on Saturday. However, the season isn’t over and there is still a lot of football to be played, but the Irish need to bounce back quickly from the tough loss.

After the game, quarterback Sam Hartman shared the message within the Notre Dame locker room as the Irish try to move on.

“It’s a long season,” Sam Hartman said. “That hurts. Close game, big crowd. It’s tough but the season goes on. The bond grows. You win, you learn. That’ll show up in the loss column for us, and we know that, but it’s about next week, about bouncing back, and it’s all we can do.”

The game will be remembered for Ohio State scoring with a second remaining while Notre Dame only had 10 men on the field. However, the Irish did manage to come back from being down in the game to win. Still, Hartman wasn’t ready to say he’d learned anything from that, yet.

“I’m sure later in the week we can find something, but right now it’s pretty low, pretty dark,” Sam Hartman said. “But, that’s college football. It’s life. Gotta bounce back. That’s what we’ll do. It’s Notre Dame.”

Notre Dame travels to Duke this weekend where College GameDay will be in town. That will be the Irish’s second straight game against a ranked opponent and could easily become a second loss if Notre Dame isn’t on its toes.

Marcus Freeman is setting the tone after the loss

Following Notre Dame’s loss to Ohio State, it’s head coach Marcus Freeman who is setting the stone for the team moving forward.

“The No. 1 comfort I have is our coaching staff and the ability for us to go through an emotional 24 hours but rally together. Now you have some friction. It wasn’t a great Sunday for anybody in this office. But you get back together in the afternoon and say ‘We have to get better, and we have to move forward,’” Freeman said.

“You pick your head up. Don’t be embarrassed. Own the mistakes we made. Attack them, and get back to work. We’re a really good football team that didn’t play well when it mattered the most on Saturday. Great teams play well when it matters the most. You’re never going to be perfect. But when the game is on the line, great teams find a way to execute. And we didn’t. We have to go fix that.”