Notre Dame Gets 21-13 Win Despite Muck of the Irish

These days, Notre Dame’s football team has tried to take the best of times and turn them into the worst of times. The Fighting Irish beat Michigan State here Saturday, 21-13, and still continued to see their glass as half empty.

After the game, Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz said his team played badly for long spans. He added that maybe now everyone will realize how far the Irish have to go before they are a good team, and then took paranoia to new heights by throwing out a fact only the statistics freak would love.

“We go on the road now and we have to play Purdue and I understand that they’ve beaten Notre Dame every year after Notre Dame has won a national championship,” Holtz said.

Anthony Johnson, Irish fullback who scored the winning touchdown midway through the fourth quarter on a one-yard run, worried along with Holtz: “We are getting into a bad tendency of playing just when we need to, when we really need to play a whole 60 minutes.”

And Tony Rice, the team’s starting quarterback, called his game of 78 yards rushing and 90 passing “my worst ever at Notre Dame.”

So, looking beyond all the finger-nail biting and gloomy introspection around here is necessary when getting a proper perspective on Notre Dame’s program. All the worrywarts notwithstanding, Notre Dame did the following Saturday:

--Remained the country’s No. 1-ranked team.

--Extended its winning streak to 15 games, longest in the country, already the sixth longest in this school’s storied history.

--Won for the 13th time in a row at home.

--Attracted a crowd of 59,075, marking its 84th consecutive sellout and its 132nd in its last 133 games here.

--Showcased the current leader in the Heisman Trophy race, Rice.

--Fielded a kickoff return specialist, Raghib (Rocket) Ismail, so feared that the opposing coach, Michigan State’s George Perles, refused to kick the ball anywhere near him, thereby giving Notre Dame excellent field position after every kickoff because of Michigan State’s squib kicks.

--Increased its record this season to 3-0, with a schedule ahead that does not put it up against any team currently in Top Ten rankings until its last game of the season, a Nov. 25 contest at Miami against the current No. 2 Hurricanes.

Now, if they could just enjoy it.

The Irish took a 14-0 first-half lead on two touchdowns by Ricky Watters. His first score was a two-yard run that capped a 72-yard drive that took 14 plays and 6 minutes 16 seconds. It was accomplished with such ease that the game immediately took on the look of a 35-0 rout. And that was fortified when Watters took a pitchout in the second quarter from a stumbling Rice, ran to his left through a huge hole, then cut back toward the center of the field, accelerating past two Spartan defensive backs with such a burst of speed that it raised the question of which Irish player should really be nicknamed Rocket. Watters’ burst was for 53 yards and the Irish looked, well, like a No. 1-ranked team.

But those best of times turned bad quickly with Michigan State driving to two field goals by John Langeloh before halftime. Each was set up by a Notre Dame turnover. And when the Spartans dominated the third quarter, holding Notre Dame to only one first down and cutting the lead to 14-13 when Dan Enos passed 30 yards to James Bradley, an upset appeared at hand.

But time after time, the Notre Dame defense rose up to stop the Spartans. Then, midway through the fourth quarter, almost as if it had just been toying with Michigan State all along, the Notre Dame offense drove 62 yards in nine plays, all runs, to the final touchdown--Johnson’s short dive.

Michigan State had one last chance, driving to the Irish 25, where it faced a fourth-and-one with a little more than three minutes remaining. Enos handed to running back Hyland Hickson over the right side, and Hickson, who appeared to make the needed yardage with his thrust forward, was stopped abruptly and thrown back by tackle Bryan Flannery. The officials spotted the ball, brought out the chains and measured Michigan State’s effort as inches short.

Perles, Michigan State’s coach, was asked if he questioned the spot by the officials.

“Yes, I questioned it,” he said. “I don’t criticize officials, but I officiate every play myself out there. That’s just natural. All coaches do, even though it doesn’t do us any good.”

Something else that didn’t do Perles and the Spartans any good was the injury to star running back Blake Ezor. The senior from Las Vegas, who is only 97 yards away from becoming the second-best rusher in Michigan State history (behind Lorenzo White), was injured on the game’s first play and managed to stay in long enough to gain 27 yards. Perles said Ezor had a separated shoulder.

Despite his loss, Perles was able to lend some humor in one area, his decision not to kick to Ismail, who returned two kickoffs for touchdowns against Michigan last Saturday.

“I didn’t want to take on the whole world on national TV and be a stubborn Lithuanian,” Perles said.

And Holtz got off a good line about the problems caused for both teams by a gusting wind out of the north.

“It was one of the stranger things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Every time we had the wind at our back, our linemen dominated the line of scrimmage. When it was against us, we couldn’t do a thing. Now, I can see wind affecting a little 18-ounce spheroid (a football), but why it would do anything to a bunch of 250-pound guys I have no idea.”

But soon, Holtz was back to the hand-wringing and brow-furrowing that seems to be gauged at making a famine out of the feast here.

“We’ve just got lots of work left to do,” he said. “Lots of it.”