John Raffel – AHN Sports Correspondent

East Lansing, MI, United States (AHN) – Brian Kelly didn’t exactly want his first three weeks as the new football coach at Notre Dame to go this way.

The Irish are 1-2 after losing 34-31 to Michigan State Saturday night in East Lansing.

The Spartans stunned the Irish on the last play in overtime by scoring on a fake field goal attempt with a touchdown pass from the holder Aaron Bates to tight end Charlie Gantt to keep MSU unbeaten at 3-0.

But the Irish, hoping Kelly’s arrival would mean a turnaround in the program, had to feel perhaps slightly snake bitten by the turn of events.

“This is a difficult loss obviously,” Kelly said. “It came down to one play which Michigan State executed and we did not.”

“It’s disappointing to us,” said junior Michael Floyd. “We’re not worried about last year. We’re trying so hard.”

The hope for Irish players like Kyle Rudolph is that under the Kelly regime, the Irish will prove to be more resilient and more determined to such heartbreaking events.

“We’re built for this,” he said. “We’re going to come back. We proved it last week [in a 28-24 loss to Michigan] that we’re never going to stop fighting no matter what the score is, how much time is left on the clock or what our record is.”

“Well this hurts so there isn’t a lot I can tell them that is going to make them feel better,” Kelly said of his team. “This is about belief—what do you believe in? Do you believe in your teammates? Do you believe in our coaches? Do you believe in the preparation? If you do, we will come back and work hard to get better. If you don’t believe, then these are times where a team falls apart.”

Last December, Kelly, after serving 19 seasons as a head coach, was named the 29th head football skipper in the storied history of Fighting Irish football.

Kelly was coming off of a 2009 season in which his University of Cincinnati squad went through the regular season perfect 12-0. He had taken Cincinnati to two consecutive Bowl Championship Series appearances.

Kelly entered the season as the ninth-winningest active coach in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision in victories.

In three seasons at Cincinnati, Kelly had a 34-6 mark. Saturday night at East Lansing, Mich., he was coaching against Mark Dantonio whose place Kelly took at Cincinnati in 2007. Dantonio had left Cincy to take the MSU job.

Kelly had been at Central Michigan University prior to going to Cincinnati. He took a losing program at CMU and turned it into a winner. Kelly had spent 13 campaigns at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich. with a 118-35-2 record and two NCAA Division II titles. Kelly entered the season with an overall mark of 171-57-2.

But after Kelly found his Irish at 1-2, he had to find the words to have his team leave town in an upbeat mood on Saturday.

“I give a lot of credit to Notre Dame,” said Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio. “They are a well-coached football team. They play extremely hard. They have good players that make plays.”

“Obviously an incredibly tough loss,” said Notre Dame quarterback Dayne Crist. “Guys were battling the entire game. It’s never a good thing to lose, and in this type of fashion, it’s pretty devastating.”

“I’m not worried about our guys at all. Right now, guys are upset obviously. It’s a tough loss and guys are hurt by that, but we’ll give it time to get out of our systems. I have to worry about guys bouncing back and being ready to go next week.”

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