Irish recruiting update

Things have been relatively quiet on the Notre Dame recruiting front the past two weeks with the Fighting Irish away from home. And they will likely stay that away until the week of Oct. 16, the Sunday before the Irish host USC at night.

For now, it's worth taking a look at what other potential Notre Dame prospects are doing in their time before then.

William Mahone, the highly touted four-star running back from Austintown Fitch (Ohio) High School, will be joining prep teammates Demitrious and Chris Davis at Heinz Field tonight for Pitt's game against South Florida, according to our guy Jared Shanker.

Shanker says this is the last shot for Pitt to make a strong impression on Mahone, who will likely choose between the Panthers, the Irish and Michigan State. The Davis twins have already committed to Pitt.

Still, Shanker said, it would be surprising if Mahone didn't end up in South Bend, Ind. He visited Sept. 17 for the Irish's win against the Spartans, and he liked it so much that he is paying his own way back for the Irish's Oct. 22 game against the Trojans.

Until then, however, don't expect much movement from a Notre Dame 2012 recruiting class 15-deep, one that moved up two spots to 11th overall in the nation in ESPN's latest rankings, released Wednesday.

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Irish can't forget last time vs. Todd Graham

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- A day before being admitted into the ACC, Pittsburgh's football team held a 17-point fourth-quarter lead in a hostile Big Ten stadium before losing by four.

Sound familiar?

[+] Enlarge AP Photo/Charlie NeibergallNotre Dame has painful memories from its last game against coach Todd Graham, who now leads Pittsburgh. OK, so the Panthers' collapse in a 31-27 loss to Iowa didn't exactly replicate Notre Dame's 35-31 loss at Michigan a week earlier. And, to be fair, the loss Saturday was Pitt's first of the season, so it might not be scratching its head and playing with the same chip on its shoulder that the Fighting Irish did in the culmination of two frustrating weeks Saturday, a 31-13 win against Michigan State for victory No. 1.

Brian Kelly, for one, doesn't think Pitt will let its loss linger.

"They're a football team in a first year with coach [Todd] Graham," Kelly said during a conference call Sunday. "They're still learning, they're still learning about the coaching staff. I know where they are relative to that development. We'll be more concerned with what we do and how we do it then losing a tough game. I know we lost a couple tough games, too, and the first thing he'll probably do is talk about, 'Put that behind you, because you've got Notre Dame coming into town. Because if you let that linger you'll get beat by Notre Dame.'

"So I'm pretty sure what happened last week won't have much effect on what happens this week."

What the Irish should be more concerned about is not letting what happened last year against Graham happen again.

Last year's game against Tulsa, Graham's previous head-coaching stop, was supposed to provide ample opportunity for the Irish to bounce back from a tough loss to Navy and get back over .500.

Instead, the Golden Hurricanes knocked Dayne Crist out of the game, ending his season. They scored 10 unanswered points in the second half and picked off Tommy Rees in the end zone in the final minute, sealing a 28-27 win that was the program's first against a BCS-AQ team since 1996.

More troubling is how they did it.

They blocked an extra point and returned it 98 yards for two the other way.

They returned an interception 66 yards for a touchdown.

And, late in the third quarter, they returned a punt 59 yards for a score.

Notre Dame finally put two weeks of misery behind it with a win this past Saturday, and with a favorable schedule in the next three weeks, it can be tempting for the team to look ahead.

To prevent that, the Irish should look back at the last time they faced a Graham-coached team, and know that the more talented one they will face Saturday may carry an anger that is all-too-familiar.

Notre Dame knew the feeling just a short week ago.

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USC game offers Irish chance at mulligan

When Brian Kelly plays golf, he says he starts from the black tees. By the time he makes the turns and is shooting 17 over par, he might move up to the whites.

That's how Kelly justified his lofty talk upon taking the Notre Dame job, when he spoke of returning the Irish to national championship contention. By comparison, his first team's 6-5 record is a triple-bogey.

"Clearly, 6-5 is not what I had in mind," Kelly said.

Yet, like a golfer who shoots a 98 but drills the approach shot on No. 18, the Irish can still leave this regular season feeling good about themselves and itching to tee it up again. The way to do that is to win at USC this week.

The Trojans have beaten Notre Dame every year since 2001, and the games in Los Angeles have been particularly embarrassing for the Irish. Check out the scores of those four games:

2002: 44-13
2004: 41-10
2006: 44-24
2008: 38-3

"This one has been one-sided," Kelly said. "It's our job to make this a true rivalry."

After the Army win on Saturday, Kelly said his players were already talking about their next opponent in the locker room for the first time all year. That's how much the USC game means, and it shows how big ending this losing streak to the Trojans would be for the program.

The Jeweled Shillelagh looks as ripe for the taking as it has been in a decade, too. The probation-saddled Trojans are just 7-4 this season and may not have starting quarterback Matt Barkley, who suffered an ankle sprain in last week's blowout loss to Oregon State.

USC is just 3-4 in its last seven games, while Notre Dame might have finally built some momentum with two straight highly impressive victories over Utah and Army. If the Irish can finish with a sweep in November after going 3-10 during that month the previous three years under Charlie Weis, that will speak volumes about Kelly's player development and conditioning regimens. And remember they would be doing this without a score of injured starters, though receivers Theo Riddick and TJ Jones and linebacker Carlo Calabrese are expected back in at least backup roles this week.

A strong finish would allow the Irish to go into the winter on a positive note for the first time in a while. There would be plenty to build on, especially since so many key contributors and starters will return next season.

The team already qualified for a bowl thanks to last week's win over Army, but another win opens up new possibilities. At 7-5, Notre Dame would be eligible to take the Big East's slot in the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando and would become a more attractive at-large option elsewhere.

"I certainly want to make sure we get to a warm-weather area so you can play some golf," Kelly joked to the media on Tuesday.

A 7-5 season wouldn't set any course records. But given all the circumstances, it would look pretty good on the final scorecard.

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