No Stopping Notre Dame Title March : Irish and Rice Too Much for West Virginia, 34-21

As Notre Dame raised the curtain on another national championship Monday, Tony Rice stole the show.

Rice threw for a career-high 213 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 75 yards Monday as the top-ranked Fighting Irish completed an undefeated season with a 34-21 victory over No. 3 West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl.

The national championship, which will be certified by the voters today, will be the eighth in Notre Dame history but the first in the 1980s, when the Irish had three straight losing seasons.

“Now that it’s over, I can say this: They beat the No. 2, 3 and 4 teams and won 12 games. What more can you ask for?” said Lou Holtz, Notre Dame’s third-year coach.

In winning the national championship, Holtz joined Notre Dame predecessors Frank Leahy (1943, 1946, 1947 and 1949), Ara Parseghian (1966 and 1973), Dan Devine (1977) and Knute Rockne, who won six national titles before the Associated Press poll began in 1936.

Notre Dame was overpowering from the start against West Virginia, which also was previously undefeated and had hopes for its first national title.

Rice attempted only 11 passes and completed 7. He threw touchdown passes of 20 yards to freshman Raghib Ismail late in the second quarter and 3 yards to backup tight end Frank Jacobs early in the fourth quarter.

The Mountaineers couldn’t get a first down until 9:22 of the second quarter. That was on a late-hit penalty, one of 11 penalties against the Irish. West Virginia quarterback Major Harris struggled throughout. He bruised his left shoulder on the third play of the game and finished with just 166 yards passing and 11 yards on 13 carries--most of them desperate runs from charging Notre Dame defenders. He was sacked three times for 28 yards.

“It’s been a great season,” West Virginia Coach Don Nehlen said. “We didn’t play very well. Major was hurt the first half, but Notre Dame is a better football team than we are. They beat us up front. They deserved to win. They are better than we are.”

On Notre Dame’s first possession, Rice scrambled for 35 yards to the West Virginia 31. Four plays later, Billy Hackett kicked a 45-yard field goal, longest of his career.

A 23-yard pass from Rice to freshman Derek Brown set up Anthony Johnson’s 1-yard touchdown run at 10:26 of the first quarter to make it 9-0. Notre Dame made one of its few mistakes when holder Pete Graham muffed the snap on the conversion try.

Early in the second period, Rice whipped a pass over the middle from the Notre Dame 48 to Brown at the West Virginia 35. Brown rumbled to the 5 and fullback Rodney Culver, another freshman, plowed over at 5:19 for a 16-0 lead.

At that point, Notre Dame had outgained West Virginia, 188 yards to 27, and held the Mountaineers without a first down and to 27 total yards on their four possessions.

The 16-0 deficit was the largest of the season for the Mountaineers, who finished with the first 11-victory season in their 96-year football history and averaged 42.9 points a game, second-best in the nation. The game marked the first time this season that the Mountaineers had been held to fewer than 22 points and yielded more than 30.

Harris was hurt on the third play of the game when he was tackled by Michael Stonebreaker, Notre Dame’s All-American linebacker, during a 2-yard run on third-and-3 from the West Virginia 33.

Harris completed only 6 of 13 passes for 82 yards in the first half and carried nine times for nine yards.

“Major was not operating quite like he normally does, so we had a little bit of a problem,” Nehlen said.

It was one problem after another for the Mountaineers, who needed two of the four personal-foul penalties committed by the Irish to set up the first of two field goals by Charlie Baumann, a 29-yard kick at 8:42 of the second quarter.

But Notre Dame quickly responded, going 63 yards in eight plays, including Rice’s 19-yard pass to Johnson at the West Virginia 28. Three plays later, Ismail split three West Virginia defenders, caught Rice’s pass in full stride at the 11 and scored easily.

Baumann’s 31-yard field goal on the final play of the half made it 23-6. Notre Dame’s Reggie Ho kicked a 32-yard field goal in the third quarter and, 2 minutes later, West Virginia scored its first touchdown on a 17-yard pass from Harris to Grantis Bell.

The Mountaineers trailed by only 26-13 and had a chance to get back in the game when cornerback Willie Edwards intercepted a Rice pass and returned it 14 yards to the Irish 26 with 2:45 left in the third quarter.

But Notre Dame’s hard-hitting defense rose to the occasion. Harris lost 2 yards, threw an incomplete pass and then was sacked by All-American end Frank Stams and linebacker Arnold Ale for a 12-yard loss that put the Mountaineers out of field goal range.

If any doubt remained, Notre Dame erased it with an 80-yard, seven-play drive. Rice capped it with his short pass to Jacobs and ran for a 2-point conversion that made it 34-13.

West Virginia’s Reggie Rembert scored on a 3-yard end-around with 1:14 remaining and then caught a two-point conversion pass from Greg Jones, but that was as close as the Mountaineers could get.

NO. 1 AGAIN Notre Dame’s record and coach wen it finished the season No. 1 in the Associated Press poll. (Note--Final 1988 poll will be released Wednesday):

Year Record Coach 1988 12-0 Lou Holtz 1977 11-1 Dan Devine 1973 11-0 Ara Parseghian 1966 9-0-1 Ara Parseghian 1949 10-0 Frank Leahy 1947 9-0 Frank Leahy 1946 8-0-1 Frank Leahy 1943 9-1-0 Frank Leahy