The season hasn’t gone the way Louisville football wanted, but it will still be considered a success with a win over Kentucky in the Governor’s Cup.
All four of the Cardinals‘ losses this season were by a touchdown or less. Their last-second loss to a last-place Stanford team effectively removed any statistical chance they could make the ACC championship game.
It took away their national shine, too, as they got booted from the College Football Playoff rankings and the Associated Press and US LBM Coaches polls.
Those facts sting.
Those things also pale in comparison to the past year of pain last season’s 38-31 loss to the Wildcats caused. The miscues still roll off U of L coach Jeff Brohm’s tongue as if he’s still making his postgame remarks from last season.
Louisville had arguably its best drive of the 2023 season — 75 yards in nine plays, consuming more than nine minutes to start the second half — erased in the 12 seconds it took UK’s Barion Brown to race 100 yards for a kickoff return touchdown.
The three turnovers stayed with Brohm, too.
“If you don’t win it, man, it puts a sour taste in your mouth, and we had that feeling last year,” Brohm said. “Man, it’s a bad taste, and it stays there for a long time. So you gotta work your butt off this week to try not to have that taste come back again.”
Louisville knows what disappointment feels like this season. A few plays here and there and it could have been a very different narrative heading into the final game. The Cards’ shortcomings that led to losses were all self-inflicted:
The Tyler Shough fumble and muffed punt that helped Notre Dame jump to a 21-7 lead in the first quarter.
The continued failure to convert short-yardage plays, including a fourth-and-1 with a chance to take a fourth-quarter lead on SMU.
The Isaac Brown fumble recovered in the end zone for a Miami touchdown, as if the Hurricanes needed any help scoring in their 52-45 win.
The back-to-back defensive penalties that set up Stanford’s game-winning field goal as time expired.
Yet those plays will largely be forgotten by the masses should the Cards snap their five-game losing streak to the Wildcats on Saturday.
“If you ask anybody in this city, I think this game would mean more than anything else in the world,” said U of L senior defensive lineman Ramon Puryear, who went to Eastern High School. “Honestly, that’s the biggest game. So we know what it means to us, we know what it means to this city. We know what it means to this university. So we got to get it done.”
No one on Louisville’s current roster knows what it feels like to beat UK. U of L, which also won five straight in the series between 2011-15, has not won since quarterback Lamar Jackson led them to victory in 2017.
But two of the Cards’ coaches, offensive coordinator Brian Brohm and offensive line coach Richard Owens, each hold 3-1 records as players against the Cats.
“Little different dynamic, where back in the day it was a buildup all offseason and all summer,” said Brian Brohm, a reference to when the game was played as the season opener. “Now it’s kind of a culmination, the end of the season, to go head-to-head, but it’s a super important game. Super important for our program, for this state.”
Neither school has won six consecutive games since the series restarted in 1994. Louisville is trying to make sure UK doesn’t become the first to achieve the feat.
The Cards’ season is depending on it.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Governor’s Cup: Louisville football could save year with Kentucky win
