Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/89043
FROM THE LOCKER ROOM Kelly … On his initial thoughts of the Notre Dame head coach Brian going to be able to control both sides of the ball on the offensive line and defensive line. We stuck with our game plan. We came in here wanting to run the football, and we rushed for over 270 yards. Controlling the football and playing great defense in the second half has been our for- mula for winning, and we are not going to go away from that." victory: "I am really proud of my team and the way they competed, particularly the second half. We dug ourselves a little bit of a hole in the first half with some uncharacteristic mistakes. But we told them at the halftime, 'This is about how we fin- ish this football game.' There wasn't a panic. We stuck with what we were doing. "It was pretty clear that we were Notre Dame senior running back Cierre Wood … On keeping calm playing from behind: "At halftime, there was no screaming or yelling. The coaches made adjustments, and we knew what we had to do. We went out in the second half and executed." On maintaining communication when the team was down: "We knew going into it that we were go- ing to be the more physical team. We were shooting ourselves in the foot in the first half. Everyone knew it, and everyone was on the same page. In Senior running back Cierre Wood had a team- high 18 carries that totaled 114 yards, the sec- ond time in the last three weeks he eclipsed 100 yards rushing for the 7-0 Irish. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA ment: "We just finally figured out how to do all the small things cor- rectly. In the last two years, we just didn't know how to put it all to- gether. That's the way it is this year, we have the mental toughness and the second half, we made the adjust- ments and got it done." On the game serving as a state-