No. 1 Irish Roll On as Pitt Doesn’t Put Up a Fight, 45-7

Notre Dame, an unorthodox place where the football coach threatens to quit with a 19-game winning streak in progress, made it 20 in a row Saturday at the expense of previously unbeaten Pittsburgh, 45-7. There were no fights. There were no apologies. There was no contest.

“Notre Dame just whipped us in every way possible,” said Mike Gottfried, coach of the seventh-ranked Panthers, who scored first and then never again. “We unraveled.”

The No. 1-ranked Irish had considerably more trouble with USC, on and off the field, than they did seven days later with Pitt. In between, Lou Holtz vowed to step aside as Notre Dame’s coach should any more unsportsmanlike conduct occur, then fell into a deep funk at subsequent criticisms of the Fighting Irish, who were more accustomed to having Houlihans than hooligans.

As a result, Holtz sounded more like a coach who had been through an ordeal than he did like a coach who just defeated a ranked opponent by 38 points.

With a hangdog expression on his face, Holtz squirmed in his seat at his postgame session with the press, and, after a couple of brief, unenthusiastic comments, said: “If nobody has any questions, I appreciate your coverage.”

There was laughter.

“You think that’s a joke, but I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Holtz said, morosely.

“This is a football team that has been through a tough week, and all I can say is, they responded to one another.”

A tough week. Remember, it was a week that followed a victory over the school’s archrival, which kept Notre Dame atop the national rankings. As tough weeks go, you wouldn’t have thought this one to be all that tough.

“The week we had seemed like a month,” Holtz insisted.

He was plenty worried about Pittsburgh, which has taken pride in giving Notre Dame fits. The Panthers won three of their previous four games with the Irish, and hadn’t been beaten in this stadium since 1978. Only Purdue has won more games at South Bend than Pitt, which used to whip Notre Dame on a regular basis during the 1930s, even shutting them out four times over one six-game stretch.

This year, though, the only Irish who will have a chance to be impressed with the Panthers are those in Dublin, Ireland, who will watch Pittsburgh play Rutgers in the Dec. 2 Emerald Isle Classic.

Pitt (5-1-1) was totally outplayed Saturday, to the point that Notre Dame quarterback Tony Rice was needed for only three quarters, and finished the day with only one completed pass. After driving 68 yards for a touchdown on their first series, the Panthers gained a total of one yard over their next five possessions.

“We kind of self-destructed,” Gottfried said, having seen his players do everything from stumbling in the end zone for a safety to fair-catching punts at their own five-yard-line. “I’m disappointed in my preparation and disappointed in the way we played. We really need to reassess our ballclub.”

Pitt, which earlier in the season scored 22 points in the fourth quarter to tie powerful West Virginia, plays second-ranked Miami next, a date Gottfried now appears to be dreading.

“Notre Dame and Miami are on a different plane from everybody else,” he said.

Just as they did a week earlier against the nation’s top rushing defense, USC’s, Notre Dame tore through Pitt’s tacklers, who ranked 10th coming into the game, giving up only 92 rushing yards a game. The Irish piled up 310, spreading the wealth among 10 guys.

Crowd-pleaser Rocket Ismail broke off the longest run of the day, a 50-yarder for a touchdown, to the delight of the 59,075 Ismailites in attendance. Ismail also caught Rice’s only completed pass, while Rice expertly engineered drives that led to a pair of one-yard touchdown plunges by Rodney Culver and a two-yarder on an option pitchout to Ricky Watters.

“That Rice, if he isn’t a Heisman guy, I don’t know what is,” Gottfried said.

The Irish also intercepted three of Pitt redshirt-freshman quarterback Alex Van Pelt’s passes, with Pat Terrell returning one of them 54 yards for a score. Van Pelt had gone four previous games without an interception, and ranked eighth in the nation in passing efficiency.

Just as against USC, though, Notre Dame spotted the visiting team the early lead.

Pitt went 68 yards in a dozen plays, with fullback Ronald Redmon hauling in an eight-yard touchdown pass from Van Pelt. After only 5 1/2 minutes of football, the Panthers appeared ready to give Notre Dame all it could handle.

“I don’t know why it takes our defense a drive to get used to the game’s tempo,” Notre Dame defensive tackle Jeff Alm said. “We sure didn’t want to do the same thing we did against Southern Cal.”

Not to worry.

Pitt spent the rest of the day burying itself with poor field position because of poor judgments--even throwing an illegal block on a fair catch at one point--and making life miserable for punter Brian Greenfield from Sherman Oaks, who had enough trouble trying to plant properly on a stress-fractured right leg.

Greenfield punted superbly, but he was the best part of Pitt’s offense. Van Pelt, on third-and-12 from his own four, stumbled after the snap and collapsed in the end zone for a safety, making it 7-2.

Notre Dame scored twice before halftime, on Culver’s first dive and Terrell’s interception, and was home free. Even two missed field goals didn’t matter. Notre Dame’s offense was so in gear, with three third-quarter touchdowns, that the Irish went to two backup quarterbacks and even another kicker during the entire fourth period.

Steve Belles, the second-string flanker behind Ismail, scored the final touchdown on a run of 13 yards with 4:12 to play.

Holtz felt better, but not much.

“This was just one of those days,” he said. “First time we really played a complete game.

“But, it’s not over. There’s always something else coming up. We need to get ready for Navy.”

Tough week.