First of all, I need to say that I’m pretty proud of the defense . For a unit that has gotten torched by awful offenses (i.e. Pitt, Georgia Tech, etc.), the way they held up against a potent Fighting Irish offense was beyond encouraging. To see them get off the mat after abysmal performances and make this Notre Dame game a slugfest is a great improvement and is exactly what we needed to see going into the softer back half of the schedule.
Really not sure if we expected to win this game with how the season had gone so far, but seeing the defense hold their own and seeing the offense keep things close enough to make things interesting is about as much as we could have asked for next to winning the damn thing out right.