It's not a breakthrough, but Notre Dame exorcises a few November demons in L.A.

Notre Dame 20, USC 16. A month ago, Notre Dame lost it starting quarterback and all remaining shreds of optimism in a 28-27 flop against Tulsa, dropping the Irish to 4-5 just one week after the depths of their ongoing Weisian malaise were revealed in a blowout loss to Navy. Saturday night, Notre Dame took a true freshman quarterback making his second start into a venue where it hadn't won in a decade, turned the ball over four times in a driving rainstorm, and left (possibly against their better judgment) with a few tentative pangs of optimism intact.

In fact, the Irish hadn't even been competitive in the L.A. Coliseum in a decade: Over the course of the Trojans' eight-year winning streak in the series, the average score of ND road trips was USC 42, Notre Dame 13. The last time the Irish were in SoCal, in 2008, they failed to gain a first down until the final play of the third quarter and lost by five touchdowns. Tonight, after building a 13-3 halftime lead, the Irish's first six possessions of the second half ended interception, punt, fumble, punt, punt, interception. USC turned those turnovers into three short-field scores to go ahead, 16-13, with a little over six minutes to play – another vintage Notre Dame collapse in the making, on the heels of three blown fourth quarter leads already this season and six others in 2008-09.

Instead of letting the monsoon wash their demoralized, injury-ravaged ranks back to the bus, though, the Irish lined up for a four-minute, 77-yard march – 61 of them coming on the ground, courtesy backup tailbacks Cierre Wood and Robert Hughes – capped by Hughes' go-ahead touchdown run. When ND safety Harrison Smith stepped in front of Mitch Mustain's last-gasp heave toward the end zone two minutes later, it sealed Notre Dame's first fourth quarter comeback of the year, and its first winning regular season since 2006.

More importantly, it moved the Irish to 3-0 in November, the month that ultimately brought down Charlie Weis. At Halloween 2008, Notre Dame was 5-2, and proceeded to lose four of its last five in November, punctuated by a humiliating loss to Syracuse in the home finale and the token pounding at USC in back-to-back weeks. Last year, the Irish went into the final month sitting at 6-2, and proceeded to drop four straight, including home losses to UConn and Navy. Kelly's first team, by contrast, started November in the throes of utter chaos – on and off the field – and responded by notching the program's first win over a ranked team in almost four years, then by breaking the bonds of the most one-sided major rivalry in the country.

So Saturday's triumph may have as much to do with USC's steady, increasingly blasé decline as it does with Notre Dame beginning to get its act together. The trends are mirror images of one another: When the Irish were at their lowest following the losses to Navy and Tulsa, the Trojans were putting together their best win of the season at Arizona. Suddenly, there was Notre Dame inexplicably trouncing Utah two weeks ago, just ahead of USC getting trounced by reeling Oregon State, and losing its starting quarterback in the process. Both teams limped out of the Coliseum looking the worse for wear at 7-5, but they got there going in opposite directions.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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