Entering the final two weeks of the regular season, the University of Louisville needed a good win. No guarantees, however, with a tough, physical Pittsburgh team in town. UofL fans never know what they’re going to get during an up and down season, with unpredictable wins and some surprising losses.
Should be evident by now that a Jeff Brohm-coached team is going to come out fired up after an embarrassing loss. That’s exactly what the Cardinals did on Saturday with a very convincing 37-9 win over Pitt in front of 49,442 fans at L&N Stadium. A scare at the start, with the Panthers rolling 68 yards in nine plays Louisville’s seven-yard line. Seconds later, UofL’s Stanquan Clark would intercept a Pittsburgh pass in the end zone, setting a vastly different tone.
With Louisville quarter Tyler Shough completing six of seven passes, UofL would march the length of the field for a field goal. Pitt’s bad luck would continue with an injury to quarterback Eli Holstein on its next offensive drive, stalling at its own 41 yard line, forcing a punt. Starting at their own 18-yard line, the Cardinals would need only five plays — one of them a 46-yard scamper by Isaac Brown — to score their first touchdown, a one-yard plunge by the aforementioned Brown.
From that point on, it was clear that Louisville was going to have one of those games, you know, when everything was going right. The Cardinals racked up 505 yards on offense to only 265 for Pittsburgh. Shough completed 17 of 28 passes for 278 yards and two touchdowns. A nice way to end his one and only home season at UofL after seven years in the college ranks. Brown was good for 100 rushing yards and two touchdowns in 13 carries.
“We’re really proud of our team,” said Brohm. “I think anytime you have loss that disappoints us all, you’ve got to be man enough to look in the mirror and identify the problems and go about the week and try to fix them. I think we did a really good job of that and we worked on a lot of things that I thought were costly the last game and we came out and played a much cleaner game. It wasn’t the best start at the very beginning, but we got a big interception that helped us and we played hard for four quarters. So I’m really proud of our players and our coaches. This is a good football team we played.”
Louisville improved its won-lost record to 7-4 and completes the ACC portion of season with a 5-3 mark, its ninth conference winning percentage of .500 or better in 11 seasons as an conference member. Brohm improves to 17-8 at Louisville and 83-52 overall.
Time to really get serious now with Kentucky coming up. Don’t need to remind anyone that the Lexington school has dominated lately, with five straight wins in the series.
