As Holy Cross head coach Peter Vaas walks the sidelines during tomorrow's Bermuda Bowl III game, his focus is bound to switch to another college match thousands of miles away.

It's not that he'll completely block out what's happening on the National Stadium gridiron, but if there's an instant decision to be made, say, on a fourth down situation, Vaas is likely to think about what Notre Dame head coach Lou Holtz would do.

Holtz's Fighting Irish will be hosting Boston College, and Vaas's thoughts are never far away from the man he coached under for two seasons in 1990 and 1991.

"Just observing the man, the greatest thing that I admire about him is his ability to focus on the task at hand,'' said Vaas in a telephone interview.

"His focus changes minute to minute, hour to hour. I mean he can handle back surgery and a game plan and it's just incredible to watch him.

"I've tried to call upon it in my own demeanour in the way I handle our football team. Holtz has a great knack for being very relaxed and very upbeat with his kids before and after practices and before and after football games.

But I tell you, what you don't want to be is around him during practice. You don't want to be around him during the game. He's an incredibly intense man.'' Vaas led the Crusaders (1-6) through their first practice in Bermuda late yesterday afternoon at Warwick Academy, only a few hours after their arrival for tomorrow's Bowl clash (2.00 p.m.). Despite an imposing winning streak against Fordham which dates back to the Depression era, Holy Cross are clearly the underdogs against a rampaging Rams squad which have lost only once in their last four games.

Holy Cross, meantime, have been outscored 196-75 in their six losses, and, according to the amiable Vaas, the Crusaders have been the victims of too many self-inflicted wounds this season.

"There are three or four games that we've given away rather than those teams beating us,'' said Vaas, currently in his fourth season at the helm of the Crusaders. "I think we gave away last Saturday's game (a 27-17 loss to Lafayette) as well as our games against Yale and Brown. We were also very generous in the Cornell game.

"We've self-destructed an awful lot. We haven't played anybody where we could play poorly and still win. We have not reached that point where week in and week out we consistently play well. Last week we went back to our old ways and self-inflicted disaster upon ourselves.'' That kind of talk would lead anyone to believe that Vaas, who has compiled a 42-38-1 record during his four years at Holy Cross, has been driven to frustration by the way his team have played this season.

"There's a line in a Rudyard Kipling poem, `if I can treat triumph and disaster as the two imposters they are'...and that's really what we want to do here. When Sunday or Monday comes, regardless of what has happened on Saturday I don't get upset with our kids when they give 100 percent effort. I don't get upset when we make physical mistakes. I get upset when we don't provide an effort and at this point in time our kids have not gone to a game and not given it 110 percent, so I'm very proud of our team. I'm very disappointed and frustrated with our football team, but I'm not frustrated with our football players.'' The season instantly unravelled with devastating losses during the first two weeks against Hofstra (24-9) and University of Massachusetts (51-0).

"How do we bounce back from that?,'' said Vaas, responding to a question.

"Well, you have no choice, you really don't. Your choice is to keep on going or quit. We don't have any quitters on our football team. Our kids do too many positive things to allow one Saturday afternoon to be a reflection of their life and we won't allow that to happen.'' At the beginning of the season Vaas, 42, was convinced the Crusaders would have compiled more wins than losses by the time they arrived in Bermuda.

Still, there have been glimmers of hope with the team relying on running backs J.R. Walz and Rob Sanchez and their behemoth offensive line with includes Tom Claro (six-foot-five, 320 pounds), Dan Monahan (six-foot-two, 305 pounds) and John McCarthy (six-foot-eight, 320 pounds). On defence David Streeter leads the Patriot League with 115 tackles and is on pace to shatter the school's record of 182 tackles.

"My gut feeling is that we'll probably play our best game of the year on Saturday,'' said Vaas. "Every single time that we've laid a challenge in front of our kids they have responded very positively. I don't know whether we'll win, but we'll play with a tremendous amount of emotion.'' If Vaas has one regret it's that his players won't be able to enjoy a mini-vacation in Bermuda, with a much different kind of road trip -- a six-hour bus ride to Bucknell -- on next week's horizon.

"We're not going to be able to relax and enjoy Bermuda as much as we would like to,'' said Vaas. "If on Saturday at 5 o'clock our football season was over and we weren't leaving until Sunday night we could enjoy it. That's a regret I have. I really wish that there was an opportunity to take advantage of a great island.'' Then there's the matter of how Lou Holtz is doing in Indiana, which Vaas will almost certainly want to catch a glimpse of on television once the curtain falls on Bermuda Bowl III.

TEAM TALK -- Holy Cross coach Peter Vaas (centre) talks tactics with his players during a training session at Warwick Academy late yesterday afternoon.