![]() What? Who doesn’t respect BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick? Only a moron. That’s when, on what had become the most important play of the game, the Cougars unimaginatively and ineffectively handed the ball to running back Lopini Katoa, who was absolutely stoned in place for no gain. It was a throw maybe your grandmother could have caught, but, instead, Nacua allowed the ball to fall to the turf.Ī second moment came late on a BYU drive that could have tied the score with a TD and 2-point conversion, the Cougars taking the ball with 6:07 remaining and moving to the Notre Dame 27-yard line, where that march stalled, forcing a fourth-and-1. Hall flipped a pass that would have kept the drive alive to an open Puka Nacua, supposedly the Cougars best receiver. The first came with the Cougars down by five, moving the ball across the field, facing a critical third-and-7. “I don’t think he was 100 percent,” Sitake said of his QB. Hall simply couldn’t keep up, even as he stirred a second-half charge that attempted to overcome a 25-6 deficit, closing that margin to 12, then to five, but that effort ultimately failed. Instead, Notre Dame was effective, all around. And that ability knocked BYU off balance, jumping all over creation in an attempt to disrupt what was hitting them. From there, Notre Dame ran the ball straight over and through the Cougars’ defense. Notre Dame had more passing yards and more rushing yards by substantial margins.īYU struggled with its pass game early, Jaren Hall starting the game with an interception on the first play, giving the Irish the ball in BYU territory. “… The bewildering speed and power of the backs slashed along for eight, 10, 15 yards on play after play … carried by backs who were as hard to drag down as … buffaloes,” Rice wrote in his famous report.Īll told, on Saturday, BYU gained 276 yards, Notre Dame 496, Notre Dame had 24 first downs, BYU 13. Just as was so famously written by Grantland Rice so many years ago, when Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death, had their way against Army’s defense, the same could be said here against BYU’s. There was little the Cougars could do to alter that discrepancy. But the Irish possessed the ball for more than 40 minutes, BYU for less than 20. Not that the Cougars are lousy, they fought back in this game honorably after falling substantially behind through a couple of quarters. This much became clear in this game: Notre Dame really is a better, faster, more physical football team than BYU. There wasn’t even a blue-gray October sky draped across the heavens, at least not in sight, since the game was being played under that translucent plastic roof at Allegiant Stadium. It didn’t matter that Knute Rockne wasn’t coming out of the tunnel to coach the Irish and the Four Horsemen weren’t riding. It didn’t matter that the Irish were a mere 2-2 and BYU was higher ranked. “… Things didn’t go well in all our phases.” “It wasn’t the result we were hoping for or planned on,” Kalani Sitake said afterward. In the here and now in Las Vegas, the Cougars had one more chance to fire up a few additional Hail Marys while putting a small chunk of lead on its side of the scale.Īnd … no, history repeated itself, confirmed this time in the form of a 28-20 ND win. Head to head, the Irish led the series, 6-2. You know the history, what with Notre Dame’s 11 national championships and seven Heisman winners. It’s just that the prayer group from South Bend has been much better at it than the one from Provo. The Cougars have always wanted to measure themselves against the most famous college football program in the land, a team representing a religion, a team that’s supposed to live up to a certain set of off-the-field standards, a team that might fire up a few double-barreled prayers and swears in victory’s pursuit while slapping the living daylights out of its opponent. Shaky line play too often on both sides of the ball, an inability for the defense to get off the field, a dropped pass and a bad coaching decision help(ed) BYU not one bit. Only winning - no almosts allowed - can achieve such a thing. Same as it ever was on the rare occasions when these schools meet. In the steel-cable-and-plastic shade of Saturday’s BYU-Notre Dame game, where the Cougars were disrespected as inferior and accused of being age-advantaged by a couple of Irish players in the run-up, the mission - see what we did there - to be achieved remained the same for BYU. ![]()
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