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UNDER THE DOME difficult to defend. "He plays extremely confi- dent. When you have a receiver that fast that plays with extreme con- fidence … I play against him each and every day, so I know a lot of his ten- dencies. We better each other all the time. He doesn't see a corner like me all the time. I don't see a receiver like him all the time when we play in a game. "When you play man on him, he gets on his toes real fast, and he ba- sically makes you make a quick decision. If it's wrong, you're not going to catch up. "You see these 40- and 50-yard plays and even some of the curls he catches, and guys are backing up too far. He catches it, and you have to come down and make a one-in-one tackle. "If he's even with you, he's leaving you, no matter who you are as a corner. You could run a 4.2 [40-yard dash] and you're not catching Will." Russell, however, was quick to point out that he would not have allowed the 39-yard game-win- ning touchdown against Virginia if he had been covering Fuller. On that score, which came with 12 seconds remaining to bail the Irish out of a disappointing week two loss on the road, Fuller admitted he didn't im- mediately see the ball was snapped. "I was like a second late," Fuller said. "I was looking to make sure the ref knew I was on. I turned around and the ball was snapped. Luck- ily it all happened that way." The junior wide re- ceiver said he can't be sure whether the play would have occurred the same way had he run im- mediately after the snap, but is confident the de- fender would have bitten on the slant anyway. "It's real hard to de- fend that," Fuller said. "[Sophomore quarter- back] DeShone [Kizer] put that ball in great position. Even if the cor- ner was over there, it would've been hard for him to get it." While the quarterbacks keep changing at Notre Dame — Kizer replaced junior starter Malik Zaire in the third quarter af- ter the latter suffered a fractured ankle and is now out for the season — Fuller keeps scoring. Fourteen of his 15 scores last season came from the arm of transfer Everett Golson, now at Florida State. Then Fuller caught four scores in a row — including one in the Dec. 30 Music City Bowl win over LSU — from Zaire. The Kizer connec- tion started what the Irish hope is another bountiful run of touchdowns. "I was telling him as soon as we knew he was going to get in that we have a great offensive NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL TICKETS 25 YEARS IN BUSINESS Call today for Special Discount 1-800-925-2500 www.NotreDameTickets.com

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