Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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straight and primarily smooth the first half of the journey. Notre Dame fo- cused all week on not looking ahead to Oklahoma, which presents the first potentially tire-shredding patch of as- phalt in 2012, and only on taking care of Brigham Young. The Fighting Irish did that in their I t's easy to fall asleep at the wheel during a long college football sea- son when the road has been mainly Irish Sidestep Trap, But Get Wake-Up Call FIGHTING WORDS WES MORGAN 17-14 victory over the visiting Cougars, but it took a little longer and required a lot more energy than expected in what had all the makings of a trap game. Whether Notre Dame was still drained from an overtime victory over Stanford the week before, or a bit of complacency seeped into the players' minds or an of- fense sputtering without starting soph- omore quarterback Everett Golson, the team came out flat but still found a way to remain undefeated. Despite staying perfect, what head coach Brian Kelly said he saw in the locker room afterwards was somewhat of a deflated squad. "I want them to know that you can't win games by 28 and 30 points," Kelly said. "You need to find ways to win. That's who we are. There's a lot of teams around the country that have made their programs on winning 7-6 and 13-7. It's just who we are; embrace who we are, I guess is what I'm saying. We just keep fighting, keep playing and we'll find a way to win." The Fighting Irish may have not felt full satisfac- tion in topping BYU 17-14 to narrowly escape a potential trap game, but head coach Brian Kelly reminded his troops that a win is a win. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA