Rice Gets Irish Going, and They Romp, 52-7

Tony Rice passed for 2 touchdowns and ran for another and Ricky Watters returned a punt 66 yards for another score Saturday, leading No. 8-ranked Notre Dame to a 52-7 victory over Purdue.

It was one of the worst defeats suffered by Purdue in this series, which dates back to 1886. The worst loss was 48-0 in 1970.

The Irish (3-0) scored 28 points in the second quarter before Coach Lou Holtz cleared his bench. Holtz used three quarterbacks in the second quarter and four during the game.

But Rice created havoc in a little more than a quarter. He ran 38 yards for a touchdown and threw touchdown passes of 8 yards to Derek Brown and 54 yards to Raghib Ismail as the Irish took a 42-0 halftime lead.

Mark Green scored on a 7-yard run in the second quarter and Tony Brooks caught a 34-yard touchdown pass from Steve Belles. Brooks also carried 11 times for a career-high 110 yards, but didn’t play in the second half.

Purdue (1-2) avoided a shutout when Calvin Williams returned a punt 40 yards to the Irish 15-yard line and then caught a 10-yard pass from Brian Fox for the touchdown with 3:20 left in the game.

Holtz was glad to see the emergence of a passing game by the Irish. The Irish passing attack was suspect with only 5 completions for 90 yards and 3 interceptions in their first 2 games.

“Tony threw today like he has thrown in practice,” Holtz said of Rice, who completed 4 of 6 passes for 85 yards. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s not ready to play on Sundays yet, but he threw very well. Even on the first pass he threw, which was dropped.

“We needed to throw more but we didn’t have the opportunity,” Holtz said. “It got out of hand. Before you knew it, it was 28-0 and then we return the punt for a touchdown and it was 35-0.”

Purdue Coach Fred Akers, thankful Holtz went to his reserves early and didn’t run up the score, said: “It was something that did not go unnoticed by me. This was their day and it was an incredible first half.”