SOUTH BEND ― Weather the weather, weather perhaps the last remaining big challenge of the regular season and from your greatest rival, win a water-logged game and set up for a November sprint to a familiar finish .

Sounds like a Notre Dame football plan carried to perfection.

Don’t say it. Don’t speak it. But you can start to think it after No. 15 Notre Dame beat No. 21 USC, 34-24 , on a rainy Indiana night.

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