First game on the road in a new conference, another milestone for the University of Louisville football program.
Kinda scary, even if it is at the University of Virginia. The Cavaliers have won only two Atlantic Coast Conference games over the past couple of seasons. Despite being picked to finish sixth in the ACC’s Coastal Division, the Cavaliers have surprised the analysts in their first two games.
Virginia gave UCLA a scare in their season opener at Charlottesville before succumbing 28-20 to the Bruins, then ranked seventh in the nation, and the following week ended an 11-game losing streak with a 45-13 pasting of Richmond. The Cavaliers have to be feeling pretty good about themselves, eager to prove they’re getting better as Louisville arrives.
Over the past couple of decades, UofL has had mixed results in their first road games in three other conferences.
The Cards lost their first Conference USA game on the road in 1996 to Southern Mississippi 24-7 at Hattiesburg. They stumbled 45-14 against South Florida in their first road game in the Big East at Tampa in 2005. They defeated Temple 30-7 in their first road game in the American Athletic Conference at Philadelphia.
Although Louisville and Virginia have played only two games until now, they have been very good ones, decided by field goals in the closing minutes. UofL defeated the Cavaliers in a 30-28 cliffhanger at the Fairgrounds in 1988, but the Cavaliers returned the favor 16-15 in Charlottesville the next season.
Bobby Petrino relishes such challenges, of course. “It will be the first time we get to travel together … and then deal with the crowd noise offensively and defensively, so it will be a good challenge on the road against a team that I think is playing well.” he said.
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The game will be televised by WAVE3-TV, and Kent Taylor gets the pre-game coverage started with a live broadcast of “Inside The Cards” from Charlottesville at 11:30 a.m. He’ll have an interview with Petrino, followed at noon by the ACC Blitz, a preview of the day’s ACC football games.
45-10! Yikes! Pork it to ’em! I’d love it, but have to predict a 10-14 point win for the Cards.
Minor edit error: I knew we played in Papa John’s in 1998. So, something had to be wrong. Turns out the come-from-behind Cardinal 30-28 win was in 1988!
Good catch, Tom. The old disconnect between brain and typing fingers.
Everybody’s fretting over nothing. Cards win big 45-10. Heard it here first.