Blue and Gold Illustrated

Oct. 7, 2013 Issue

Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football

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Under the Dome night game against Stanford. He completed his last four passes the previous week in a 52-7 rout of Purdue, and then the first six versus the Cardinal. In all, Rice completes 11 of 14 passes for 129 yards with a touchdown to freshman tight end Derek Brown, and rushes for 107 yards on 14 carries with two touchdowns, highlighted by a 30-yard score off the option on the opening possession. Rice joins Paul Hornung and Joe Theismann as the lone Notre Dame quarterbacks to eclipse 100 passing yards and 100 rushing yards in the same game. Hornung did it during a 1956 loss at SMU (19-13) with 128 yards passing and 101 rushing, while Theismann did it during a 29-0 victory at Michigan State in 1970 by passing for 147 yards and rushing for 107. "He's a winner, he's a leader and he's the guy they get the meal ticket from," Notre Dame head coach Lou Holtz said of the often-maligned Rice. "I don't think we know how good we can be," senior left offensive tackle and tri-captain Andy Heck said of the 4-0 and No. 5 Irish. "That's good because we've got to keep running scared." — Lou Somogyi ✦ Gimme Five During Notre Dame's 3-1 start this season, junior Cam McDaniel was the leading rusher with 169 yards, an average of 42.25 yards per contest. At that pace over a 13-game season, including a bowl game, he would finish with 549 rushing yards. That led us to ponder what the lowest rushing total ever was by a leading ground gainer in one season at Notre Dame. Dating back to when records were first kept 95 years ago during the Knute Rockne coaching era (1918-30), the lowest single-season top rusher for Notre Dame occurred in 1959, head coach Joe Kuharich's first season, when Gerry Gray's 50 carries netted 256 yards. It was the only time the top ground gainer for the Irish finished with less than 300 yards. Over the last 50 seasons from 1963-2012, there have been nine occasions when Notre Dame's top rusher finished with less than 600 yards. Here is the top five: Player (Year) 1. Joe Kantor (1963) 2. Bob Minnix (1971) 3. Mark Green (1986) 4. James Aldridge (2007) 5. Ed Gulyas (1970) Carries- Yards 88-330 78-337 96-406 121-463 118-534 Record (AP Rank) 2-7 (—) 8-2 (13th) 5-6 (—) 3-9 (—) 10-1 (2) Note: Notre Dame had only 10-game regular seasons until 1974, and Gulyas' 24 yards rushing in the Cotton Bowl victory over No. 1 Texas was not included back then.

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