This week ESPN’s “College Gameday” travels to Clemson, South Carolina for a battle between a couple of unbeaten squads as the host Tigers take on North Carolina State. Notre Dame is off for their bye this week but with the weather that is expected it’s seemingly fitting from a Fighting Irish fan’s perspective that these two are meeting up.
Hurricane Ian is making landfall on Wednesday on Florida’s gulf coast and with it is bringing an incredible amount of rain and dangerously high winds. In all seriousness, far beyond the importance of a silly football game this weekend or from years ago now. all the best to those having to evacuate or ride this thing out.
Clemson playing host to North Carolina State on Saturday will be played in what should be a ridiculous amount of rain and probably wind, too. With it being at Clemson it brings back memories for Notre Dame fans as in 2015, the unbeaten Fighting Irish and Tigers met in Clemson and played a classic while being poured on by the rains from Hurricane Joaquin. It also brings back memories of one of the ugliest games in Notre Dame football history, the 2016 hurricane game at North Carolina State, something we also took a look back on.
Thanks to costly Notre Dame turnovers it looked like most of the night that Clemson was going to run the Irish out of the building. Stretching their lead to 21-3 just after halftime, the rout was seemingly on.
However, Notre Dame mounted a comeback by dominating the fourth quarter and a touchdown pass from DeShone Kizer to Torii Hunter, Jr. with just seven seconds left brought the Irish within two. Brian Kelly called a Kizer designed run to the outside for the two-point conversion try that was stopped and with that, Clemson escaped with the 24-22 victory.
Take a look back at that memorable but heartbreaking night in Clemson below: