The crumpled Cardinal Bird inflatable in the north end was unfortunately all too symbolic of what had just happened to the University of Louisville football program in a 38-35 loss to Central Florida.
Any remaining hopes for competing for a shot at a national title had been crushed. Granted the odds were long at best before the game. Afterwards, the aspirations were revealed to be overblown, pretentious, and delusional. Another good football had fallen from the ranks of the undefeated, bowing to one that was much stronger this night.
Another wonderful crowd, 55,215 fans on hand, caught up in the dream, arriving early, staying to the bitter end, all of a sudden reacquainted with what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the final score. An unexpected phenomenon in the Year of the Cardinal.
An early sign that things weren’t going to go UofL’s way occurred late in the first quarter when Ryan Hubbell fumbled a Teddy Bridgewater pass into the UCF end zone for a touch back. Two yards short of the end zone. A nasty omen that couldn’t be ignored, returning to taunt Charlie Strong’s team at the end.
Louisville’s defensive unit, which had been so impressive against the run in the previous six games, suddenly looked fallible, especially after the Cardinals jumped to a 28-7 lead in the third quarter. Whether UofL’s defense relaxed or UCF picked up the intensity will never be known for certain but a Senorise Perry fumble inside the 20 certainly didn’t help the cause.
“The thing we didn’t do is tackle well,” said Coach Charlie Strong afterwards. “If you look at it we’d be right there to hold the guy, he’d break the tackle and make one guy miss and then he’s down the boundary. The tackling was very poor.”
Central Florida would rush for 196 yards, dispelling temporarily at least, the façade of one of the nation’s best rushing defenses. Meanwhile, Louisville was managing only 104 against a defense that looked much better.
Teddy Bridgewater had another good passing game, completing 29 of 38 passes for 351 yards. But until what was expected to be an exceptional running back trio, still struggling, finally gets its act together, any remaining wins are going to continue to be less than satisfactory. They’re making the doubters look like geniuses until that happens.
Make no mistake. Louisville lost to a good team in UCF, learning some lessons in life from a hard-nosed bunch of Floridians who out-toughed them in almost every phase of the game. A bruising black and blue lesson for all the UofL transplants from Florida.
Dreams of playing in a national championship were nice while they lasted. Still a lot to play for, however, including a possible shot at a second straight BCS bowl, although that possibility also took a huge hit with the loss.
Anything can happen in college football, and usually does. How Louisville will respond to the loss is the main question that needs answering now.
“I don’t know,” said Charlie Strong. “We’re going to find out. We’ve got some more games to go play so we’ll see if we have what it takes.”
The season is over as far as they way most of us envisioned it. True its just one loss but look who it was to. National Title contention is out of reach.
National title game was a stretch with our lack of a consistent running game. Still, there’s a lot of season left. The Houston-UCF matchup November 9th should be very interesting.