I agree that the game wasn't really in doubt and you can't necessarily claim that their struggles portend bad late-game execution in the future, but you realize that ND was USF's last game before yesterday. Kind of hard to have "come a long way" in one game.
The ND game as you mentioned was a close game throughout. USF may have turned the ball over a lot at the end, but their largest lead was 5 with about 10 to go 1 with 5 to go and 3 with about 3 to go.
Now USF should have at least scored more than 2 points in the last five minutes but ND only put up 3 points during that time span. The pace of that game was drag down slow and scoring/offense was abysmal on both sides.
I don't consider that as much of a collapse as just a close game that ND managed to get to OT.