Notre Dame wins, but expected more

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I don’t know if it was the balmy weather, the crazy week filled with fires blanketing the Southland or just the halftime fireworks show, but tonight’s contest between No. 7 Notre Dame (7-1, 1-0) and Loyola (4-4, 0-1) just didn’t seem like a typical Serra League game to me.

Sure, the Knights, as expected, won pretty easily, 26-9, but there was an aura of disappointment surrounding Notre Dame’s performance.

It just seemed the team wasn’t as pumped up as they should have been for a league opener and that was kind of odd, especially when you consider how lively the atmosphere was thanks to all the homecoming celebrations going on.

‘I don’t know if it was the weird week with all the fires and everything, but we didn’t play to the level we expect,’ Coach Kevin Rooney said. ‘Obviously, Loyola had to play within the same [circumstances], so I’m not trying to make excuses. I just expected more and I know the team did, too.’

The Knights did look a little stale in the first half when they struggled to get a running game going. Things went a little better in the second half thanks to a Dayne Crist, pictured above, TD pass and a 26-yard TD interception return by LB Jordan Barrett, but things never seemed to be running at 100% for ND.

‘We didn’t play as well as we needed to,’ said QB Dayne Crist, ‘It’s a pretty big step backwards ... we didn’t execute and we weren’t consistent. We could do a lot better.’

Translation: Notre Dame did enough to win. But a game like this down the road against Crespi (or anybody in the PAC-5) won’t cut it.

-- Austin Knoblauch

-- Image by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times