You knew this was coming; the 46 point line all week told you so. While this had all the classic makings of a trap game on paper, #18 Virginia and #3 Georgia behind us, arch-rivals USC and Michigan coming up, the talent and size disparity between #9 Notre Dame and Bowling Green was too many rivers to cross.
BG held the Notre Dame offense to a three-and-out on their first series. It was all down hill for their Falcons after that. Fighting Irish starting quarterback Ian Book had a half that was more productive than a lot of teams’ starting QB whole seasons up to this point.
Book went 15-17 passing for 255 yards, five touchdown passes and one interception. With one more TD toss in the second half, he would have tied Brady Quinn for the single-game school record of six, set against BYU in 2005. However, Book’s day was done (16-21, 261, 5, 0) by the middle of the third quarter, as Phil Jurkovec replaced him with about 4 minutes to go in the period; and the Irish holding a 38-0 lead.
After the break, the Fighting Irish defense put a fair amount of back-ups on the field, and it’s only fitting and fair, given the current status of the game (As I said in my game preview, this is why it’s tricky to bet such enormous point spreads).
The stats that tell the story so far in this one are passing yards and third/fourth down conversions. Notre Dame held a 255-51 advantage in team passing yards at the break, 339-136 in total yardage.
In terms of third down conversions, ND was 4 of 6 while Bowling Green was 4 of 11, to complement their 0 of 2 on fourth down.
We’ll be back after the game with Notre Dame quotes and notes; to go along with some updated statistics on the Bowling Green Massacre.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
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