Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Stanford on the road in their final 2011 regular-season game. In a contest that served as a micro- DENIED AGAIN T Notre Dame misses another opportunity for a quality win, falling to Stanford 28-14 BY DAN MURPHY he No. 22 Fighting Irish let an- other golden opportunity slip through their outstretched hands with a 28-14 loss to No. 4 cosm of a frustrating 8-4 second year under head coach Brian Kelly, Notre Dame emerged from an error-riddled start with hope, but was never able to string together enough big plays to overcome a 21-0 halftime deficit. The loss ended Notre Dame's third four- game winning streak under Kelly, who finishes year two still searching for a defining moment of success. "I'm disappointed that we didn't come here and get a victory," Kelly said after the game. "We didn't come here to get a second prize. We came here to get the win, and nobody in that locker room is happy with the outcome. We got off to a slow start and battled against it, kept playing, kept competing. "I'm proud of the way our guys battled. To me, the scoreboard showed 28-14, and that's not good enough. But I love the heart of our team." Cardinal quarterback Andrew Luck was not to be denied in his fi- nal home game at Stanford. He threw four touchdown passes to finish his marvelous career as the program's all-time leader with 80. Luck's 55-yard strike to tight end Coby Fleener with five minutes re- maining in the game finally buried an Irish team that hung around for 55 minutes despite struggling on of- fense throughout the night. Stanford's physical front seven held Notre Dame to one of its worst offensive performance of the season. The rushing attack that had carried Notre Dame through much of the season fell apart without senior Jo- nas Gray in the backfield, gaining only 57 yards on the night. A sec- 20 DECEMBER 2011 ond straight week of miscues from starting quarterback Tommy Rees in the passing game kept Notre Dame out of rhythm and off the scoreboard during the first half. Andrew Hendrix replaced Rees on the final drive of the first half and played the rest of the game. The sophomore, who had played only two snaps since Notre Dame's 31-17 loss to USC Oct. 22, provided a brief spark for the Irish. Hendrix led the Irish on a 77-yard scoring drive midway through the third quarter to break a five-quar- ter touchdown drought for Notre Dame. The sophomore quarterback threw for 44 yards on the drive and ran for 14 more. He hit Irish senior wide receiver Michael Floyd on a frozen rope along the goal line for the touchdown. It was the first time the Irish had reached the end zone since Gray's run on the first drive of a 16-14 win over Boston College the previous week. Hendrix finished his first signifi- cant chunk of playing time with 192 yards through the air and 20 on the ground, capped by a two-yard touch- down run with 23 seconds left in the game. He completed 11 of 24 pass at- tempts with one touchdown and one interception. "We felt like getting the ball on the perimeter with some of their loaded box looks might help us out, and An- drew did a pretty good job in some instances," Kelly said. "He turned the ball over, but it was his first real competitive situation." Notre Dame's defense played a stout second half to keep the game in reach for the Irish. It held the po- tent Stanford offense scoreless in the third quarter — the 11th time it has done that to an opponent this season — and held Luck to one big play in Sophomore quarterback Andrew Hendrix compiled 212 total yards (192 passing and 20 rushing) and accounted for two scores (one passing and one rushing) after taking over for starter Tommy Rees. PHOTO BY AARON SUOZZI BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED