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✦ News & notes Head coach Brian Kelly is hopeful his team can open the season with the same focus and near flawless execution it had against Navy in 2012. photo by joe raymond All head coach Brian Kelly ever has to do, though, is look back on the opener two years against a South Florida team that would finish with a losing record. The Bulls were up 16-0 at halftime against the turnover-plagued Irish en route to a stunning 23-20 victory. "Every single day I talk about it — I'm not that far removed from South Florida," Kelly said of keeping his players centered on the task at hand. "This is my livelihood, so I think about all those things." The unknown that comes with an opener can leave any coach on edge, especially because Temple will be under first-year boss Matt Rhule, who was a top assistant for current Miami head coach Al Golden at Temple before working for two-time Super Bowl champion Tom Coughlin last year while with the New York Giants. "You know that this football team is going to be ready," Kelly said of Rhule's background with Golden and Coughlin. "They return a lot of players from last year. We don't know exactly what we're going to see. We think we do, but this is one of those openers where we're going to have to make some adjustments along the way." Notre Dame's focus in last year's opener, a 50-10 rout of Navy in Ireland, was virtually flawless, and Kelly wants to see similar concentration and execution in this season's debut. "Last year we understood how important it was to get off to a great start, play the game the right way, pay attention to detail, play with great effort and enthusiasm — and the watch word for us will be to play the game clean," Kelly said. "Don't turn the football over. Make sure that we're efficient in the special teams game — and hopefully more than that this year. "I think we all know openers tend to have some mistakes in them. We need to play a clean opener against a team that obviously is coming into Notre Dame Stadium and has nothing to lose." Team Mass Moved To Friday Last year, Notre Dame finished un✦ Page 13