Game Ends Up a Tie, Holtz Ends Up Lost : Irish: Coach, looking for answers, also has to search for a place to hold a team meeting.

As if tying USC wasn’t bad enough, and finishing 6-4-1, and waiting now for, gulp, the Sun Bowl to call, Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz had a heartfelt post-game pep talk all rehearsed and no place to give it.

You think that ever happened to Rockne?

The 66th meeting of this running series may have ended without resolution, a 17-17 tie at the Coliseum on Saturday, but it was not without its drama.

Holtz, who couldn’t quite pull the trigger on a crucial fourth-down, fourth-quarter situation, did manage to steal the postgame show and set the psychological stage for next season.

In a move normally reserved for visiting junior college teams with a running bus waiting, Holtz called his team back out of the Coliseum’s west-end tunnel after the game and huddled the Irish on the 30-yard line.

Holtz claimed the visitor’s lockers weren’t large enough for a meeting.

“There’s no where to meet here,” Holtz said later. “I looked down into the showers. You tell me where to meet? There were some things I wanted to share and I didn’t want to walk out of here without sharing them.”

Notre Dame left a lot of questions out on the field.

The Irish’s 11-game winning streak against the Trojans was over, and Holtz might have only himself to blame.

With seven minutes remaining, and a seven-point lead, and his team driving into a head wind, Holtz made the call that usually decides games such as these.

It was fourth and two at the USC 20. A field goal puts Notre Dame up by 10.

“They would have needed two scores,” Holtz said.

A coach was torn.

“The players wanted to go for it, and I probably should have,” Holtz said. “I felt it was the right thing to do at the time. It turns out it wasn’t.”

Stefan Schroffner’s 37-yard field-goal attempt was met at the line of scrimmage by the long arm of Israel Ifeanyi, who blocked the kick and watched teammate Sammy Knight scoop up the ball and run 56 yards to Irish 16.

Five plays later, the score was tied.

Jeremy Sample, a Notre Dame linebacker, knew what he would have done. “As a defense, we’re always pushing them to go for it,” he said. “But who am I to question the coach?”

Ron Powlus, the quarterback, knew what he would have done. “Being on offense, the players want to go for it,” he said. “But I’m not going to question it.”

Powlus had enough to worry about in his first season as the second-coming of Joe Montana.

A tie against USC and 6-4-1 doesn’t get it done.

“There are many things I wish I could have changed,” said Powlus, who completed 13 of 22 passes for 115 yards and one touchdown. “My rookie season at a lot of places would have been all right. But it’s just not acceptable for myself or Notre Dame.”

Nor are ties against a team your school has beaten 11 consecutive seasons. Powlus said afterward that the game felt like a loss.

“It might as well be,” the quarterback said. “A win would have lifted our season. This didn’t do anything for us.”

Except, perhaps, make Notre Dame make another decision about whether to accept a bowl bid with six victories. There were years the Irish would have respectfully declined, deeming themselves unworthy for consideration.

But with Notre Dame’s drawing power and name recognition, you can bet the bowls will come calling.

Holtz, in his postgame news conference, was acting as though he was saying goodby to 1994.

“I don’t believe we’re going to a bowl,” he said. “I don’t know, that’s up to the University of Notre Dame.”

The players, of course, don’t want the season to end like this. But does Notre Dame go to just any bowl?

“I want to go to a Jan. 1 bowl,” linebacker Jeremy Nau said. “I’ve heard maybe the Cotton, but basically, my feeling is, I want to play in prime time. The Sun Bowl, all those, are great and all that, but we’re Notre Dame. We had our hearts set on the Fiesta or the Sugar. It just didn’t happen.”

Whatever happens, the season will not have been a total loss.

“They still haven’t beaten us in 12 years,” Powlus said of USC. “The streak, it’s still there, sort of.”