Notre Dame
WSU 26
Notre Dame 29
OT
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Notre Dame |
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TV ALERT: NBC, 11:30 AM PDT
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College Football
Washington State at Notre Dame
210 min.
Washington State Cougars at Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Carlyle
Holiday returns at QB for the Irish, whose 10 wins last year were the most for
the school since 1993. Holiday is opposed by Cougars signal caller Matt Kegel,
who takes over for the graduated Jason Gesser. This is the first-ever meeting
between the two schools.
Cougfan.com - Posted Sep 3, 2003
Let's talk tradition
Modern lore
ranks WSU up there with anyone
By GREG WITTER
Cougfan.com Executive Editor
AS THE COUNTDOWN to kickoff in South Bend quickens, this talk of the importance of WSU playing down the lore of Notre Dame and treating the game like any other seems misdirected. By my count, the team with the lore that matters most is the one coming into the season with two straight Top 10 finishes, a 21-5 record, and 16 returning starters.
That team wears crimson and gray, folks, not gold
and blue.
The reigning Outland Trophy winner hails from WSU, not
Notre Dame. The program with one of the top vote-getters in last year's Heisman
Trophy balloting was WSU, not Notre Dame. National championship talk going into
the last full week of the 2002 regular season was about WSU, not Notre Dame.
Since 2001, the team with the best record in the Pac-10 --- the fabled
Conference of Champions --- is Ol' Wazzu. The only school in the land with two
Rose Bowl appearances within the last five calendar years is Washington State.
Touchdown Jesus or not, there's no denying that's a truckload of modern-day
tradition.
With all due respect to Notre Dame's seven Heisman Trophies, they're ancient
history -- six came between 1943 and 1964, and the last one (
Tim Brown) was back in 1987.
And the national championships? The Irish have an impressive eight of them ---
four coming in the 1940s, one in the 1960s, two in the 1970s and the last one
when the likes of
Mkristo
Bruce was still in diapers.
If this was cheese, the mold would be growing from Gary to Fort Wayne.
Any sweaty palms in the locker rooms before Saturday's 11:30 am PT kickoff might
just as well be on the Irish side as the Cougars'.
Until last season's rebound, Notre Dame over recent years had been the picture
of college football mediocrity. And even last year's 10-3 effort, while
impressive, was marred by successive blowouts at the end -- a 44-13 throttling
by
USC to close the regular season and a 28-6 Gator Bowl setback at the hands of
North Carolina State.
There's no question South Bend is a tough place for the visiting team and that
talented Tyrone Willingham is waking the echoes of past Irish glory. But
all this talk of the Cougars being overwhelmed by the journey East just doesn't
add up.
The Irish have great personnel, with
Vontez
Duff and 11 other returning starters leading the way, but dollars to Lucky
Charms they'd have to scratch tooth and nail to finish in the upper division of
the Pac-10 this season. The fact oddsmakers have installed them as just 5
1/2-point favorites bears this out. The rule of thumb in betting circles is that
the home team, no matter who it is, gets an automatic four points added to their
side of the ledger. Subtract that and what you're left with is two teams that,
on paper, are just a field goal apart.
Talk --- or don't --- until you're gold and blue in the face about the mystique
of Notre Dame. As far as I'm concerned, the rich tradition in this battle has
nothing to do with Knute Rockne or Paul Hornung or the Four
Horsemen.
Call me crazy, but I just can't imagine
Matt
Kegel lying awake at night thinking about the ghosts of Angelo Bertelli,
Johnny Lujack or even menacing Walt Patulski. They're all from
another time and place.
For me, the here and now is
D.D.
Acholonu,
Isaac
Brown,
Erik
Coleman, Jeremey Williams,
Jason
David,
Drew
Dunning,
Calvin
Armstrong and the other 42 returning lettermen who have led the Cougar
Renaissance in this, the 21st century.
Dutifully take a knee beneath the Golden Dome before the game. In this cradle of
the sport, it's only right.
But take those worry beads and drop them off at The Grotto. The storied battle
cry in this one should be as much ONWARD CRIMSON SOLDIERS as it is PLAY
LIKE A CHAMPION TODAY.
In this one,
Washington State has every bit the tradition that matters most.
Lewiston Tribune Online - 09/04/03
PULLMAN -- Three years ago, longtime assistant coach John McDonell resigned as Washington State offensive coordinator under Mike Price, whom he had assisted for 17 years, and accepted a less prestigious title on Tyrone Willingham's staff at Stanford.
If this seemed a slightly peculiar move at the time, it's now looking fairly brilliant.
Price is now unemployed, his staff scattered hither and yon, while Willingham and company, including McDonell as offensive-line coach, are being credited for righting the proud ship Notre Dame.
As an extra note of felicity, McDonell, 44, is a practicing Catholic, a Gonzaga Prep graduate whose mother in Spokane was even more thrilled than he was when Willingham was hired by the famous Catholic university last year.
"Sometimes I still have to pinch myself," McDonell said by phone this week.
The reality of the situation may hit home Saturday, when Notre Dame opens its season against McDonell's old school. The Irish and Washington State (1-0) kick off at 11:30 a.m. PDT at South Bend, Ind.
Washington State's new head coach, Bill Doba, who was the defensive coordinator during the seven-year period when McDonell ran the offense, recalled the day when McDonell told his colleagues that Stanford had made an offer. "I'm going to take it ... I'm going to take,'' he said, then abruptly left the room on the verge of tears.
"It was hard for him to leave Mike," Doba said, "but every coach wants to be a head coach, and he probably thought that was the best move, to go to Stanford with Willingham. Of course, never in your wildest dreams do you think Willingham would go to Notre Dame."
McDonell had spent his entire collegiate coaching career assisting Price, joining his staff at Weber State in 1984 and accompanying him to Washington State in 1989.
It would be hard to imagine two more contrasting employers than Price, with his informality and stream of one-liners, and Willingham, with his probity and straight-faced reserve.
Their careers at WSU and Stanford, it's true, were comparable for a while. Both were nearly fired in the 1990s, seemingly defeated by the task of combatting the traditional Pac-10 Conference powers. Then each man took a team to the Rose Bowl -- Willingham in the 1999 season and Price in 1997 and 2002 -- and their respective ships came in.
That, of course, was when their paths diverged. Price was hired at Alabama in December and fired in May for partying with strippers. Meanwhile, Willingham took over a humbled Notre Dame program last season and steered the Irish to eight straight wins, finishing 9-3.
Nine months later, McDonell still calls the experience a "whirlwind." His All-America center last year, Jeff Faine, was "as good a player as I've ever coached."
He is working with some old friends. The Notre Dame staff includes several coaches with connections to the Palouse, including three former WSU coaches: McDonell, Bill Diedrick and Buzz Preston.
For the record, McDonell plays down the contrasts between Price and Willingham.
"There are obvious differences, but there are similarities too," he said. "Attention to detail, delegation to assistants, work ethic. Fairness and firmness. Those types of things. I've learned a tremendous amount from both of them."
The dissimilarities are what seemed obvious Tuesday during a Notre Dame teleconference featuring Willingham -- obvious not so much in the Irish coach's concise, decorous remarks, but in a rare slip of the tongue, concerning offensive-line coaches McDonell and Mike Denbrock.
Willingham had been asked about the four offensive linemen lost from last year's team, including two who have proceeded to the National Football League. "Having to replace those is a challenge," he said, "but I think our coaches, John -- excuse me, Mike, um, um, John Denbrock -- no, I'm sorry, John McDonell and Mike Denbrock, have done an excellent job of bringing our group together."
The mistake would scarcely be notable if the rest of Willingham's remarks had not been so flawless, so carefully modulated, and if it didn't underscore the contrast with Price, whose tight relationships with his staff would have made such an error unlikely.
McDonell, who himself places an overriding importance on public diplomacy, was asked if Willingham kept a distance to his assistants.
"A little bit, yeah," he said, but he quickly drew a connection between that trait and Willingham's insistence on delegating authority. "He might be more of what people think of as a head coach -- with an eye on the offense and the defense and special teams. Whereas Mike was more of an offensive-minded coach."
One wonders, in fact, if Price's fixation on offense contributed to McDonell's decision to part ways. After all, the offensive coordinator's duties under Price were more organizational than strategic.
But McDonell denied this.
"I'd come to a point in my career where I loved every minute of it -- I was comfortable at Washington State and the coaches there are still my friends -- but in order to become a better coach I felt I needed to grow. I needed to experience a new system, new ways to do things."
His wife, Mindy, agreed with the wisdom of the move. And two years later, just about everyone else does, too.
Lewiston Tribune Online - 09/05/03
PULLMAN -- As a true freshman, Jason Hill will have reason to be a little unnerved Saturday when Washington State plays its first-ever football game at well-mythologized Notre Dame.
Then again, the Cougar rookie receiver might feel right at home.
Only a few months ago, he was playing for the Fighting Irish himself -- not for Notre Dame, for Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep.
The private Catholic school in downtown San Francisco shares a nickname with the famous university as well as its religious affiliation, its austere gold helmets and the little shamrock on its jerseys.
"It's going to be crazy seeing those gold helmets," Hill said, "knowing I just wore one last school year."
There is no official connection between these two strains of Irish, and Sacred Heart football coach Phil Freed said the university "way back when" purportedly frowned on the prep school's use of copyrighted material. "But we're such a little fish in the big pond that I don't think they came after us," he said.
Sacred Heart's faculty includes two or three Notre Dame graduates, and it's fair to assume the school will be paying attention to this Irish-Cougar game. The Bay Area's awareness of Notre Dame has increased since former Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham took the Irish helm last year. Meanwhile, Sacred Heart's erstwhile star receiver has cracked the travel squad for Washington State.
With 48 lettermen returning, the Cougars were reluctant to place true freshmen on their active roster this season, especially for this first official road game, against a storied team that has won 91 of its 113 home openers. Notre Dame routinely draws capacity crowds to its 80,000-seat stadium.
But the WSU receiver crew has absorbed a few injuries, and the 6-foot-2 Hill impressed in preseason camp with his speed -- his footspeed and the quickness with which he grasped the WSU playbook. Coaches decided against redshirting him, and he was the Cougars' only true freshman to see action last week in their 25-0 season-opening defeat of Idaho at Seahawks Stadium in Seattle. He didn't make a reception, but he participated in 11 plays.
"Playing in front of 80,000 is going to be pretty amazing to me, coming from high school, playing in front of a couple hundred, maybe a thousand on a good day," Hill said.
"It was pretty amazing for me to come out and play at Seahawks Stadium, and that's not even close to what it's going to be like Saturday. I'm just excited, and ready to seize the opportunities I do get."
The freshman's quick adjustment to college football didn't surprise his prep coach.
"He's got a good head on his shoulders -- mature for his age, Freed said. "His athleticism has allowed him to be head and shoulders above his peers. One of the people on the school newspaper asked me the other day, 'Now that it's the post-Jason Hill Era, what are you expecting?' "
Hill said his background is Baptist, not Catholic, but he grew up a block away from Sacred Heart and his single mother "did her little research on the school" and decided it was the best place for him. He received financial aid from the school and eventually became a three-sport standout.
Did he become a Notre Dame fan in the process? Not a huge one, evidently. He ranks the Irish "in the top 10" of his favorite teams.
Yet ask him to name his all-time favorite football player, and he says Tim Brown, the wide receiver who in 1987 won a Heisman Trophy for Notre Dame.
NOTES -- Cougar receiver Scott Lunde, who missed the Idaho game with a rib injury, has been cleared to play Saturday, along with linebacker Pat Bennett and defensive back Aaron Joseph.
Lewiston Tribune Online - 09/06/03
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- If you wanted to get a nice long glimpse of the old Studebaker building in this town, you would probably park near the Main Street viaduct and climb an embankment to a secluded stretch of railroad tracks, just south of downtown.
There, six stories high and more than two blocks long, the factory stands quiet and forgotten, watching the tracks through thousands of opaque rectangular windows, the lower ones boarded up or covered with plastic.
As you draw closer, you hear shuffling and murmurs inside, and you wonder if these are ghosts of the old plant workers, forever churning out those giant Studebaker grills and tail fins from the 1950s. But no. Much of the building, you learn, is being used for warehousing.
Almost invisible, 40 years after it squeezed out its last automobile, the structure is a vestige of the old South Bend, the one that Bill Doba remembers. When his Washington State football team arrived in town Friday, for its game against Notre Dame today, Doba didn't go looking for that bygone version of his hometown. He knows it exists only for warehousing.
Instead, he will plunge into the new South Bend: the Notre Dame version. The renowned Catholic university and its wildly successful football program, of course, have cast a large shadow over this community for decades. But there used to be a counterweight, a south-of-the tracks industrial presence that once played a far more prominent role here than it does today.
At its hub was Studebaker, which was always something of an underdog in the automotive industry, forever upstaged by Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Finally in 1963, a year after Doba graduated from Ball State, the main Studebaker plant in his hometown closed its doors, and three years later a smaller plant in Canada also shut down.
It would be a mistake to draw a parallel with Notre Dame football, which, like many traditional powerhouses, has fallen on lean times in the past decade, struggling to adjust to stricter NCAA scholarship limits.
Notre Dame is clearly the lifeblood of this town, and the football fans here are loath to consider themselves underdogs. They are quick to tell you their new coach went 9-3 last season -- an almost acceptable level of success. The town is full of shrines and memorabilia collections, including the College Football Hall of Fame.
Doba, Washington State's first-year head coach, lived on U.S. 20 as a child, about 8 miles west of Notre Dame Stadium. On Saturdays in football season, Fighting Irish fans from Chicago and Gary, Ind., would parade past his home, bumper to bumper, for hours before and after the games.
His late mother Mitzy, devout in both Catholicism and football, would get out her rosary beads at kickoff and fondle them all game long.
"As I jokingly told someone the other day," Doba said in reference to today's game, "if my mom were still alive I don't know who she would be cheering for."
Doba himself was a moderate Notre Dame fan, and his brother Bud later attended the school. But Doba, hoping to save money and put some distance between himself and home, enrolled at Ball State.
Living in the South Bend area, particularly in the 1950s, didn't imply an automatic devotion to the Irish. A high-school athlete fresh off a big victory, for example, might feel a twinge of resentment when the sports page the next morning devoted its first three pages to the Irish.
South Bend probably also experienced a type of social tension -- "townies" vs. college kids -- depicted in the movie "Breaking Away" in connection with Bloomington, home of Indiana University. Now that Notre Dame has become the largest employer in Joseph County, the resentment may be more isolated, but it's still there.
"Bourgeois! Bourgeois!" Rob McNeill cried at the mention of Notre Dame football. He is a musician whose day job is clerking at the South Bend Kwik Mart on the south end of town.
"If this were IU, the south end would swallow them up," he said, referring to Bloomington. "Notre Dame -- I don't want to have anything to do with them. I'd spray-paint that on my car if I could do that without getting killed. Which I couldn't, because everyone loves Notre Dame."
At the Joseph County Library, Irv Morse, a former Studebaker archivist who was browsing the local history room, said a certain amount of social tension in regard to the university may have always existed in South Bend, but it was probably muted by the strict control Notre Dame once exerted over its students. A soft-spoken man with a shock of fluffy white hair, Morse is now a volunteer researcher for genealogists.
"There are those who love Notre Dame and those who hate it," he said.
He was talking to a librarian, Jane Spencer, who said she wasn't a sports fan but needed to keep track of Notre Dame games so she could avoid the traffic on those days.
"I kind of like the way that new coach (Tyrone Willingham) handles himself when you see him on TV or something," she said. "He's certainly bringing some respect to it. But if you talk about the Knute Rockne era -- that's a legend. It's got the aura of a legend, and you can't compete with legends."
Morse and Spencer talked about the industries that have folded or left town -- Singer, Studebaker, various other automotive and farming-equipment plants.
Even the Studebaker National Museum in downtown South Bend, ignored by a generation that never heard of Studebakers, seems to be struggling, largely kept afloat by a national club of antique car owners.
"I wonder why the city isn't more supportive of it," Spencer said.
"I don't know," Morse replied. "They'd rather support the Football Hall of Fame."
Four decades after leaving South Bend, Doba seems to have hooked up with an avenging Studebaker, a Washington State program that has risen above decades of mediocrity to make two Rose Bowl appearances in the last six years. After 14 years as an assistant coach, he took over the program this season and brings a 1-0 record into this first road game, in his hometown, a day before his 63rd birthday.
"I can think of a lot of places I'd rather go," he said. "But it will be a thrill. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't."
He visited the Notre Dame campus this summer and "I didn't recognize it -- it's gotten huge," he said. "They average one or two new buildings a year... .
"I had an awful lot of people tell me, 'Good luck, all except for one game.' I said that's like saying, 'Good luck, I hope you have a heart attack.' Just say good luck. Forget the one-game stuff."
ESPN Online - Saturday, September 6
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) -- The West Coast offense finally showed a spark just in time for No. 19 Notre Dame.
Trailing 19-6 and in danger of losing for the fourth time in six games dating back to last season, the Irish offense amassed 181 yards of total offense and 20 points in the fourth quarter en route to a 29-26 overtime win over Washington State on Saturday.
Nicholas Setta kicked a 40-yard field goal in the extra period as the sea of green cheered wildly at the narrow escape. Setta had five field goals in the game.
"We're lucky," coach Tyrone Willingham said. "We're fortunate."
The game had the blueprint of some of the games the Irish won in getting off to a surprising 8-0 start last year: some luck and some big turnovers forced by the defense. The difference Saturday: the Irish offense came through in the clutch.
"We struggled. They came in with a plan, which was to pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure and they benefited from it for a long time," Notre Dame offensive coordinator Bill Diedrick said. "But it cost them a couple of times for some big runs and a couple of other plays."
Washington State (1-1) jumped out to a 19-0 lead, but Notre Dame (1-0) chipped away at the deficit. The two fourth-quarter touchdowns ended a streak of 12 quarters without an offensive touchdown for the Irish.
The showing still was not the complete performance Notre Dame's coaching staff had been hoping for since ditching the option last season for the more open West Coast offense. But it was good enough to provide the Irish with their biggest come-from-behind win since beating Southern California 25-24 in 1999 after trailing 21-3 at halftime.
"We accomplished our goal, which is to win," Diedrick said.
The Irish were helped in their comeback by several Washington State mistakes. The Cougars had 14 penalties for 118 yards, including numerous miscues that kept Irish scoring drives alive.
"All through the second half all they had to do was go about 30 yards, so the penalties really hurt us," defensive end Isaac Brown.
On the opening drive of the fourth quarter, a 32-yard run by Ryan Grant turned into a 47-yard gain when tackle Josh Shavies was called for a late hit. But even after the Irish finished the 78-yard drive with a 39-yard field goal by Setta to make it 19-9, the Irish appeared to have little chance.
The momentum changed abruptly when Troy Bienemann caught a short pass from Matt Kegel and was hit hard by Vontez Duff, knocking the ball free. Glenn Earl recovered the ball on the Washington State 25-yard line.
"We needed some things to happen all afternoon," Willingham said.
It appeared that Washington State wouldn't be harmed by the mistake when Holiday mishandled a snap and it bounced loose. Washington State defensive end D.D. Acholonu fell on the ball but couldn't wrap it up, and Holiday reached under him and pulled it in. That set up an 11-yard TD pass from Holiday to Rhema McKnight to make it 19-16.
"That one hurt because that changed the attitude at that point," Washington State defensive coordinator Robb Akey said. "But the thing was we survived that and had the opportunity to go to overtime."
Julius Jones, who missed last year's surprising turnaround season because he was academically ineligible, scored on a 19-yard TD run to give the Irish a 23-19 lead. Jones ran for 72 yards on 11 carries, while Holiday was 31-of-34 passing for 149 yards.
The Irish used another turnover to score. Under heavy pressure from Darrell Campbell, Kegel threw a wobbly pass that Derek Curry intercepted at the Washington State 35-yard line. The Irish couldn't mount a drive, though, and settled for a 47-yard field goal by Setta with 3:03 left.
Washington State drove 80 yards to score with 53 seconds left, though, to force the overtime. A diving Sammy Moore made a diving catch into the end zone despite being interfered with on the 34-yard play.
The mostly costly error for the Cougars, though, is they were not able to capitalize on Notre Dame mistakes. Three Notre Dame turnovers led to a touchdown and two field goals.
"Our defense took the ball away and gave us opportunities early in the ball game and we got field goals instead of touchdowns," Washington State coach Bill Doba said.
They were also hurt by kicker Drew Dunning, who hit the left crossbar on a point-after in the first quarter and a 34-yard field goal in overtime.
Doba, though, said the Irish deserved to win.
"Notre Dame didn't quit," he said. "They had an opportunity to go down when we had a good lead on them and they just kept coming back."
Lewiston Tribune Online - 09/07/03
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- At some unspecified moment during this exactly four-hour game, Washington State seemed to wake from a pleasant dream, a dream that had seen the Cougars leading by almost three touchdowns before a capacity crowd at Notre Dome Stadium.
What would Knute Rockne think of that?
From that moment, the Cougars slowly gave way to reality -- that imperious Notre Dame version of reality -- and they eventually lost 29-26 in overtime Saturday to the 19th-ranked Fighting Irish.
The final pang of anguish for the Cougars came via Nicholas Setta's 40-yard field goal on the second possession of overtime, after Drew Dunning had missed a 34-yard attempt for WSU.
By then, however, the wheels of inevitability had long been set in motion.
After leading 19-0 in the second quarter, the Cougars defied these inscrutable forces only once, when Sammy Moore forced overtime by one-handing a 34-yard touchdown throw from Matt Kegel with 53 seconds left in regulation -- "by the grace of God," Moore said.
This unraveling was marked by 14 Cougar penalties for 118 yards, including numerous false-start infractions, perhaps related to the noise generated by 80,795 fans.
The Cougar collapse was marked by offensive futility and defensive fatigue, and by a rejuvenation of Irish tailbacks Ryan Grant (100 yards rushing) and Julius Jones (75 yards), who had been held to a combined 26 yards in the first half.
And it was marked by two or three questionable officiating calls, though the Cougars seemed resolved to avoid questioning them afterward.
"If you talk to fans, they may say 'questionable calls' or not, but we shouldn't put ourselves in that position," WSU defensive coordinator Robb Akey said of two or three late-hit judgment calls that helped turn the momentum in the third quarter.
Notre Dame overcame the disadvantage of playing its season opener against a team that had begun with a victory the previous week.
Hesitant and mistake-prone in the first quarter, the Irish then seemed to grow into their Notre Dame inheritance: the 11 national titles, the never-say-die lore surrounding legendary coaches like Rockne and Frank Leahy.
The Cougars, of course, resisted this line of thinking.
"Yeah, they have, I don't know, a whole bunch of Heisman Trophy winners (seven actually), and that's cool and everything," linebacker Will Derting said. "but that doesn't help you win games. So you have to get that out of your mind-set."
Succeeding in that regard, Cougar defenders were busy as a single parent in the first half -- they had to do almost everything themselves.
Isaac Brown scored a 12-yard touchdown on a fumble by Irish quarterback Carlyle Holiday, who had been sacked by Derting. That made it 19-0 with 2:37 left in the first half.
Earlier, the WSU defense had set up two Dunning field goals, first on a fumble recovery by D.D. Acholonu, caused by a Virgil Williams sack, and then on a strip of Jones by Jason David, recovered by Williams.
"Both teams were real surprised after the first quarter," WSU offensive tackle Calvin Armstrong said. "They were shocked they were down 19-0 and we were shocked we were beating them so convincingly, so early."
Yet the WSU offense went scoreless for a 52-minute stretch, following Kegel's 15-yard TD strike to Moore on the Cougars' second possession.
For the longest time, this offensive meekness was OK, because the defense was playing so strongly and punter Kyle Basler and his coverage team were whipping up rare feats, pinning the Irish on the 3- and 4-yard lines with cloud-kissing kicks that bounced perfectly.
But when the WSU offense began giving the ball away, this was too much to overcome. Tight end Troy Bienemann fumbled on the Notre Dame 25 in the fourth quarter, leading to Holiday's 11-yard TD pass to Rhema McKnight, making it 19-16.
And Irish linebacker Derek Curry capitalized on an apparent WSU communication error, intercepting Kegel on the Cougar 35 to set up Setta's 47-yard field goal and a 26-19 lead with 3:03 left.
"The defense was on the field way too much," said Bill Doba, playing in his hometown in only his second game since getting the WSU head-coaching job. "We've got to get first downs, and we didn't do that."
Unexpectedly, the Cougar offense did come to life in the final three minutes of regulation, breezing 80 yards for the improbable TD by Moore, tipping the ball with one hand and reeling it home.
Overtime on this day was unkind to Dunning, who had kicked a memorable game-winner in OT against USC last season. After Glenn Earl broke up a Kegel pass on third-and-1, Dunning evidently failed to strike the ball solidly, and the ball went wide-left. Dunning was a no-show at postgame interviews.
Derting, the Cougars' sophomore linebacker, capped a stellar performance (10 tackles, with a sack) by stopping Irish tailbacks for gains of 0 and 3 yards on the first two downs of Notre Dame's overtime possession.
But the Irish had the luxury of kicking on third down.
"Fortunately, we had practiced this very situation earlier in the week, and the outcome was identical," Notre Dame coach Tyrone Willingham said.
In other words, Setta coolly and decisively drilled his game-winning field goal, and Notre Dome won, as if no other outcome had ever been possible.
Washington St. 12 7 0 7 0--26
Notre Dame 0 3 3 20 3--29
First Quarter
WSU--Moore 15 pass from Kegel (kick failed), 7:52.
WSU--FG Dunning 20, 4:56.
WSU--FG Dunning 29, :31.
Second Quarter
WSU--Brown 12 fumble return (Dunning kick), 2:37.
ND--FG Setta 37, :10.
Third Quarter
ND--Setta 32, 10:10.
Fourth Quarter
ND--FG Setta 39, 12:09.
ND--McKnight 11 pass from Holiday (Setta kick), 10:32.
ND--Jones 19 run (Setta kick), 5:03.
ND--FG Setta 47, 3:03
WSU--Moore 34 pass from Kegel (Dunning kick), :53.
Overtime
ND--FG Setta 40, :00
A--80,795.
WSU ND
First downs 16 19
Rushes-yards 31-55 45-163
Passing 274 149
Comp-Att-Int 22-39-1 21-34-1
Return Yards 36 4
Punts-Avg. 4-42 3-40
Fumbles-Lost 2-2 5-3
Penalties-Yards 14-118 9-72
Time of Possession 30:47 29:13
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING--Washington St., J.Smith 14-43, Green 9-23, Team 1-(minus 1), Kegel 7-(minus 10). Notre Dame, Grant 17-98, Jones 11-72, Powers-Neal 1-2, Wilson 1-0, Team 1-(minus 1), Holiday 14-(minus 8).
PASSING--Washington St., Kegel 22-39-1-274. Notre Dame, Holiday 21-34-1-149.
RECEIVING--Washington St., Darling 4-68, Moore 4-66, Bienemann 4-30, Green 3-26, Boyd 2-38, Jordan 2-27, Lunde 1-7, J.Smith 1-6, Paymah 1-6. Notre Dame, Jenkins 5-46, McKnight 5-33, Clark 4-28, Stovall 3-24, Schmidt 1-7, Samardzija 1-5, Powers-Neal 1-4, Grant 1-2.
Lewiston Tribune Online - 09/07/03
Quick fact
The Cougars have won only two of their seven overtime games since the NCAA introduced it tie-breaking system.
Key plays
After taking a 19-0 lead with 2:37 left in the first half, Washington State immediately gives up a 43-yard kickoff return to Vontez Duff, setting up Nicholas Setta's 37-yard field goal with 10 seconds remaining.
With the Cougars leading 19-9 early in the fourth quarter, tight end Troy Bienemann catches a pass but fumbles on a hard hit by Duff. Free safety Glenn Earl recovers for Notre Dame on the WSU 25-yard line. The Irish capitalize with an 11-yard touchdown pass from Carlyle Holiday to Rhema McKnight.
After Notre Dame takes a 23-19 lead on Julius Jones' second-effort 19-yard TD run, the Cougars cough up the ball on an interception by linebacker Derek Curry. That precedes a 47-yard field goal by Setta.
In overtime, Drew Dunning misses a 34-yard field goal for WSU, allowing Notre Dame to play conservatively on its possession. On third down, Setta wins the game with a 40-yard kick.
Ahead for Cougars
The Cougars face their second challenging road game in a row, playing Colorado at 12:30 p.m. PDT Saturday at Boulder, Colo.
Lewiston Tribune Online - 09/08/03
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The mascot here is Irish, the name of the school is French and its religious affiliation is Roman -- which leads me to wonder what Saint Patrick, Joan of Arc or Pope Gregory I would make of Notre Dame football.
Well, they wouldn't understand. It's an America thing.
Even Americans don't fully understand our unique blend of influences, our coast-to-coast panoply of mixed metaphors. Still, we try. We're contantly driving around, constantly playing the inquisitive tourist.
In that spirit, about 5,000 Washington State fans made their pilgrimage to Indiana to watch the Cougars' first game ever against Notre Dame on Saturday. Their hopes for a scrapbook-caliber victory were drowned in a sea of green T-shirts and yellow penalty flags, but the game was sufficiently dramatic and perhaps these explorers found the local culture sufficiently odd.
The Cougars themselves accepted their 29-26 overtime loss with surprising equanimity, almost cheerily refusing to blame officials or teammates or Celtic druids for a gradual but wholesale collapse that swallowed their 19-0 second-quarter lead. Perhaps losing to Notre Dame is slightly ennobling. Without doubt it's heavy in precedent: Approximately 125 other schools have done it, combining for 791 losses.
The Cougars needn't apologize to their fans, who looked puzzled but passably intrigued as they wandered the beautiful Notre Dame campus Friday and Saturday, looking for mixed metaphors.
The giant stone mosaic depicting Christ raising his arms before an array of saints and scholars -- do the priests here cringe when they hear it called Touchdown Jesus?
The bronze statue of Moses pointing angrily toward the heavens -- do the theologians here wince when they hear it called We're No. 1 Moses?
Maybe not. In our society, there is no separation of church and sport. There's nothing close to that kind of separation in South Bend, where religion and football are key components of the civic identity. The glue, it seems, is humor. When you examine the 5-foot-high glazed stone tablet that rises from a sidewalk on Main Street, you're half-surprised to see it bears the original commandments and not something like, "Thou Shalt Not Pass into Double Coverage."
Of course, no one expects sports to exist in a cultural vacuum. Other schools produce their own less-than-holy alliances. One Cougar fan mentioned to me how refreshing he found the austerity of Notre Dame Stadium, particularly its complete lack of advertising. At Autzen Stadium in Oregon, "you can't look anywhere without seeing a Nike swoosh."
And after the boorish behavior of Martin Stadium fans after the Cougars' previous brush with overtime (last year's Apple Cup), along with the outbreaks of violence at several other college venues, the unstinting civility and restraint of Notre Dame's fans were especially refreshing.
Yet fans they were.
On Friday, even in the most overtly religious sections of campus, you could tell this place was gearing up for a football season opener. The vibe spread over the campus like smoke, seeping into classrooms, into chapels, into a courtyard where academics were sipping wine and listening to a flute sonata.
At 4 p.m., the bells of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart had just begun to chime when they were drowned out by a chorus of drums and xylophones-- evidently a section of the marching band rehearsing for the game. A few Cougar fans watched bemusedly.
The intrusion must have been jarring to anyone accustomed to finding sanctuary in this part of the campus. Still, people seemed to be finding it -- hundreds of them during the course of the afternoon.
At the Grotto of our Lady of Lourdes, just across Holy Cross Avenue from St. Mary's Lake, the scene played out as presumably it always plays out, people approaching the grotto and its hundreds of lighted candles rather matter-of-factly, or curiously, and then visibly altering their manner, slowing down, genuflecting as they lowered themselves to their knees.
One group of these worshippers was especially striking. On the back of one of their T-shirts were the words, "Blink 182." On the back of another, "Go Irish."