A year removed from a disastrous 4-8 season, Notre Dame is back in the national conversation after destroying arch rival USC 49-14 last Saturday to improve to 6-1 and move up to #9 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 Poll.

The Irish have gone from the team no one gave credit to--to one the Notre Dame nation is rallying behind and believing in. So naturally, how do you keep this going? How do you ensure this team doesn't start believing in itself too much?

"Our football team knows what they need to do to continue to be successful," Kelly said "Now it's my job and our staff's job to continue to see that that preparation and that mindset, you know, continues to evolve and develop on a day-to-day basis."

For Kelly, he doesn't believe things will change with his players or his team.

"Our mission from day one is to win a national championship. You guys are just catching up to us." Kelly declared Tuesday. "Whatever's being said and has been said has been what our mission has been from day one." USC lost the game. They go home and get to play for the Pac-12 championship. That's great. We don't have anything else to play for. We've been in the playoffs since we lost to Georgia. Every game is a playoff for us. Everybody is talking about getting to the playoffs, getting to the playoffs. Every game we play is a playoff game."

"Our guys don't know it any other way. Everybody else seems to have caught on with this idea that Notre Dame is playing for a Playoff spot. We don't have anything else to play for. That's what we play for. We're an independent football team, and our mission is to graduate all of our players and play for a national championship. That's all we have. It's not really any different than it was yesterday or the day before or last week.

No matter how it all shakes, Notre Dame is in incredibly different place than it was a year ago against USC and a year ago against NC State, which comes to Notre Dame Stadium this weekend for another top 15 showdown.

The Irish lost to the Wolfpack last October in hurricane like conditions with Notre Dame passing excessively in the driving rains, Brian Kelly going crazy on his center and the Irish making really bad mistakes on special teams including a blocked punt for an NC State touchdown that was the difference in the 10-3 Wolfpack win.

Brian Kelly was asked if the NC State game was a microcosm of the 2016 season where the Irish ultimately finished 4-8.

"Yeah--when it rains, it pours," Kelly said to laughter in the room.

Well played.

While Notre Dame almost always looks at the film from the previous year of an opponent the Irish are playing two years in a row, Kelly says they didn't look at the film of last year's NC State game at all.

"It was a poorly designed game plan by me," Kelly said. "There was nothing there that we really wanted to go back and look at. We've changed our punt protection since that time, which obviously the punt was a huge play in the game. There's really nothing that we could garner from that game. It really didn't show truly who they were or who we were in that game because you just didn't have the ability to exert force against the ground and be explosive and powerful."

Notre Dame and NC State are set for a 3:41pm kickoff on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium. Countdown to Kickoff gets you started at 2pm, all on WNDU.