Down three points and with the ball at the Notre Dame 18-yard line and about one minute to play, Cousins was hurried out of the pocket. Throwing on the run, his pass across the middle was intercepted by Notre Dame’s Kyle McCarthy, ending the rally and dropping the Spartans to 1-2 with a 33-30 loss.

“I made a poor decision, made a costly error,” Cousins said. “I needed to throw the ball away, take a sack, anything. … It was a major mistake and I have to learn from it and we have to bounce back.”

But Dantonio remained supportive of his young quarterback, who threw for 302 yards on the day.

“We’re not getting down the field without Kirk Cousins,” Dantonio said. “He did an outstanding job. No one feels worse than he does about this. He will rise again. He will rise up.”

Following last week’s stunning loss to Central Michigan, the Spartans looked shell-shocked in the early going.

On Saturday, after MSU went three-and-out on its opening drive, Notre Dame marched down the field in four plays. Quarterback Jimmy Clausen found tight end Kyle Rudolph wide-open on the left sideline. He scampered 52 yards before going out of bounds. Two plays later, running back Armando Allen found the end zone for a 13-yard touchdown run out of the Wildcat formation.

The Spartans offense would bounce back with a 12-play drive that saw senior kicker Brett Swenson nail a 42-yard try to cut the lead to 7-3.

But Notre Dame’s offense would not be stopped, as Clausen again marched his team down the field with ease, hitting receiver Michael Floyd for a 22-yard touchdown. The five-play drive went 2:12.

Swenson would miss a 51-yard field goal on MSU’s next possession and Clausen would continue riding high. At the end of the first quarter, Clausen was 9-for-9 for 128 yards and the Fighting Irish never handed the ball to a running back.

But when the teams changed sides of the field to start the second quarter, the tide of the game changed, as well.

On the fifth play of the quarter, Clausen went down with a toe injury and the Irish punted two plays later. He missed a long third down play but returned.

“He wasn’t full speed the rest of the way,” Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis said.

Sophomore quarterback Keith Nichol took over at quarterback for MSU and, aided by two Notre Dame personal fouls, drove the team 50 yards in three plays. Then, after Weis called a timeout to presumably calm his team down, MSU went into its book of tricks, as sophomore receiver Keshawn Martin took a reverse and found senior receiver Blair White open down the right sideline for a 30-yard touchdown.

With the momentum shifting, Dantonio called for an onside kick. Swenson hit it perfectly, as the ball hit barely past the 40-yard line and was recovered by MSU.

Now down three points, MSU looked to tie or take the lead, but redshirt freshman running back Caulton Ray fumbled on a screen pass and Notre Dame recovered.

“We left plays on the field,” Dantonio said. “We can’t do that against a good football team.”

Notre Dame tacked on a field goal, but MSU bounced right back with a 81-yard drive culminated in freshman running back Larry Caper’s first career touchdown, a 1-yard plunge, giving the Spartans a 17-16 lead heading into halftime.

The Irish came out firing in the second half, scoring on their first two drives, a touchdown and a field goal, to take a 26-17 lead.

Weis said he told his team it needed to score on its first possession of the half.

“We flipped the momentum back in our favor,” he said.

But MSU did bounce back, as Caper scored his second touchdown of the game late in the third quarter. Swenson’s extra point, however, was blocked, making it 26-23.

After forcing a punt and backed by a 55-yard gain on third down, Cousins found White two plays later for a 17-yard touchdown, giving MSU a 30-26 lead with 9:33 to play.

One of the game’s most crucial plays came later in the quarter as junior cornerback Chris L. Rucker missed a wide-open interception attempt.

Notre Dame receiver Golden Tate broke off a route and Clausen threw the ball deep. With no one around him, Rucker timed the ball poorly and it went off his hands and harmlessly out of bounds.

The Irish would take the lead for good five plays later on a 33-yard touchdown pass from Clausen to Tate.

MSU had chances on the final drive. Cousins had Caper wide open in the end zone but overthrew him.

“In that situation, you don’t really want to throw a ball up and lob it up for grabs,” Cousins said. “I didn’t realize how open he was, so I tried to lead him and I overled him. Really, he was a last-second thought and when the defense did what it did, I kind of reacted and overthrew it.”

After Cousins’ interception and the Spartans out of timeouts, Notre Dame took a knee twice to end the game.

“That’s not the way we wanted it to end,” White said. “We’ll continue to go and practice hard everyday on the two minute drill. We’ll learn from it, but you can’t expect guys to be perfect all the time.”