Notre Dame gets late wakeup call, then rises to the occasion to put away NC State, 36-7

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Was Notre Dame caught doing a little California Dreamin’ on Saturday?

A week before arch-rival USC comes to town — maybe for the last time in the foreseeable future — the Irish offense, sputtered, gaffed and got some controversial decisions from the replay booth before the 16th-ranked Irish broke free from North Carolina State for a 36-7 victory, Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium.

The Irish host USC next Saturday night at 7:30 on NBC/Peacock.

Finally solving a defense that pretty much every team the Wolfpack had played up to this point, save FCS bottom feeder Campbell, the Irish (4-2) turned a fake punt early in the third quarter into the quintessential wakeup call.

Former Notre Dame QB Tyler Buchner converted a fourth-and-2 from ND’s own 38-yard line with a 3-yard sprint up the middle. Current Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr then eventually finished off the 90-yard, 11-play, clock-eating drive (5:56) with a 19-yard scoring strike to Irish redshirt sophomore KK Smith.

It was Smith’s first career TD. And that gave ND a 17-7 lead and enough intermittent offensive momentum to finish off the Wolfpack (4-3) in the fifth-ever meeting between the two schools and only the third of them that did not involve a weather delay.

“I felt conviction from practice that we could do that right there,” said Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, now 13-2 against ACC competition and 9-0 at home against its part-time football partners. “And we’d practiced it for a while. Shout out to [special teams coordinator Marty] Biagi and the special teams, the staff, the players, the buy-in and the commitment.

We’re trying to always steal a possession, extend drives. And I thought we needed it at that moment because we went three-and-out the first drive of the second half, got a false start on that drive by [center] Ashton [Craig], and I’m like, ‘We need something. We need a [spark].’ And it was 4th and 2.

“And I’m like, ‘Go run it.’ Credit to those guys for the work they put in, from coach Biagi on down to the players to Buchner. That’s what gave me conviction to say, ‘Let’s do it in this moment.’ “

Who did not require a jump-start was Chris Ash’s defense.

Playing against an offense that was coming off a school-record 10.9 yards per play in its 56-10 pounding of Campbell and was averaging the fourth-most total yards in school history (447.7), Ash and the Irish seemed to have an answer for everything Ash’s longtime friend, NC State head coach Dave Doeren, threw at them.

That included season lows in yards per play (3.9), points (7), total yards (233) and rushing yards (51).

The exception was a 45-yard TD pass early in the second quarter in which wide receiver Terrell Anderson got behind freshman nickel Dallas Golden and that tied the game at 7-7.

Otherwise, it was a quantum leap forward for a unit that spent its first 2 ½ games toggling between neutral and reverse.

“It’s just continuously hard work, evaluation, practice, corrections. That’s the formula,” Freeman said of the turnaround. “There’s never a moment you say, ‘That’s it. You look back over the season and you say, ‘OK, maybe we changed and we got some things corrected, blah, blah, blah.’ But they have to understand it’s the work that you put in that gives you a chance.

“If they think it’s a moment, then all of a sudden they think, ‘All right, we’re good now.’ No, it’s the work you put in and the way you prepare that gives you an opportunity to play like that on Saturday. And then you’ve got to go and execute on Saturdays.”

And execute they did.

For the second straight week, the Irish recorded four sacks and multiple interceptions. Linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, safety Adon Shuler and backup cornerback Karson Hobbs had the picks for Notre Dame. The Irish run defense held the nation’s sixth-leading rusher, Hollywood Smothers, to a season-low 46 on 12 carries, and recorded a safety.

“I think what I talked about after that week — maybe it was Purdue — is that there were two options,” Freeman said. “Chris Ash can blame the players and the staff. And in return the staff could blame him and the players can blame him. Or you guys come together, you double down, you fix it, you have uncomfortable conversations and you really work tirelessly to get this thing to a better level. And that’s what they did.

“He’s the leader of the defense. So, I’m going to always give him the credit, and I give the players the credit for buying in and working. Our leadership on our players, our captains like Adon and Donny [Hinish] and Drayk [Bowen] have done an unbelievable job continuing to make sure our guys are practicing the right way but their mindsets are right. This is our defense. This is ours, and that’s the buy-in that I think you’re seeing the reflection of.”

The Irish also got a special teams lift, with kicker Noah Burnette returning from a hip injury and booting field goals of 34 and 48 yards, the latter a season-long. He’s now 5-for-5 when healthy working around two missed games.

The offense ended up with some big numbers. Among them, Carr threw for 342 yards and 2 TDs. Junior Jeremiyah Love rushed for 86 yards on 16 carries with 2 scores. In doing so, he became the fourth-fastest player to hit 2,000 career rushing yards (329 carries), behind only George Gipp, Josh Adams and Emil Sitko.

The Irish had two receivers crack the 100-yard mark in the same game since the 2022 Fiesta Bowl to cap the 2021 season — tight end Eli Raridon and wide receiver Will Pauling.

But they continue to struggle on fourth-down conversions, coming into the game 117th nationally and going 0-for-2 in the two that didn’t involve a fake punt.

“I told the offense, it’s not the fourth-down plays,” Freeman said. “It’s the plays leading up to that. It’s the penalties.

“On every drive but one, I think, in the first half that we didn’t score [on], there’s a penalty. I said the same thing after. There’s penalties. You can’t put yourself behind the sticks. So, we have to eliminate that with urgency.”

Meanwhile, the defense has found its urgency and then some. Shuler was one of the players who helped drive that home after a 56-30 win at Purdue on Sept. 20.

“Yeah, we just got to play together,” he said of his message. “It was just a lot of not-togetherness, and it wasn’t the Notre Dame standard that we were used to. And that’s what we had to get back to. That was kind of the message. ‘We’ve got to get back to playing our style of football and take it to where we’re playing and make sure they know they’re playing the Notre Dame way that we know.'”

And like the uncomfortable meetings Freeman had with his coaching staff after the Purdue game, Shuler said it was the same with the players.

“I would say every meeting is uncomfortable,” he said. “Just the way the coaches and players are and wanting to reach our full potential of being great every day. So, every day is uncomfortable — the conversations that you have with your players and coaches. And that’s just really how it should be if you want to achieve the best.”