Louisville Cardinals vs Southern Miss Golden Eagles Recap

A dark, dreary season was about to become even more miserable in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Then, out of the blackness, a football team found just the right guy to bring sunshine into Papa John's Stadium: Trent Guy.

Precisely when the Louisville Cardinals were headed for another wrenching defeat on home turf, Guy tilted the tenor of a tight Saturday night fight in Bluegrass country. It was Guy's 64-yard kickoff return that set up kicker Ryan Payne's game-winning 32-yard field goal with 30 seconds left in regulation, carrying Louisville to a thrilling and cathartic triumph over Southern Mississippi. The win doesn't solve all of UL's problems, but it put a smile on coach Steve Kragthorpe's face and made the upcoming week of practice far easier to bear. Best of all, Guy's heroics managed to inject a richly redemptive quality into an Autumnal odyssey that had been defined more by sadness than gladness heading into week six on the slate.

This eclipse of the Golden Eagles is special not just because it shows that UL hasn't quit on Kragthorpe. It's meaningful not just because it proves that the Cardinals won't allow other elements of adversity to overwhelm the entire locker room. This moment is precious and poignant because of the way Louisville lost one of the previous games on its 2009 schedule.

Go back to the Kentucky crusher, a searing setback suffered on Sept. 19. In that game, the Cards led late until Guy fumbled a punt return and enabled the Wildcats to re-take a lead and then hold on for a 31-27 victory. That game was viewed by some (others would cite the Pittsburgh game on Oct. 2) as the make-or-break battle for coach Kragthorpe, so when Guy's gaffe opened the door for Big Blue to send the Redbirds reeling, no one on the UL roster felt worse about his mistake than the little young man with explosive open-field speed.

How fitting and fabulous it is, then, that Trent Guy was the go-to source who galvanized and energized Louisville right after the visiting Golden Eagles scored a go-ahead touchdown with 2:13 left in the fourth quarter. How appropriate it is that on a night when UL quarterback Adam Froman once again turned in a credible performance under center, Guy spared Froman from having to mount a long, late drive for a winning field goal. How sweetly satisfying it is for Louisville to erase a 16-7 USM lead, and then overcome a last-minute one-point deficit, to find renewed resolve and belief heading into the teeth of its Big East schedule against Connecticut, Cincinnati, and West Virginia.

A championship wasn't won on Saturday at Papa John's Stadium. Louisville still has a distinctly uphill battle to fight on the road to a .500 season. Yet, for one happy week, the plucky and persistent Cardinals can say that they possess the ability to succeed when others will expect them to fail. So much of competitive athletics--its central thrills and its most defining challenges--involves the need to surmount obstacles and transcend previously imagined limits. Louisville passed these twin tests against Southern Miss. No matter how the rest of 2009 unfolds, a ballclub just created the kind of memory that endures into adulthood, long after these young men's playing careers come to an end.

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By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer