Louisville Cardinals @ South Florida Bulls Football Recap

Louisville 34, South Florida 24

In the 2006 season, the Louisville Cardinals made the Orange Bowl and registered a BCS breakthrough. This season, Louisville has a team with lower-tier bowl credentials, but after a gritty fourth quarter win in hostile territory, the Cardinals amazingly have a chance to once again crash the BCS party, turning logic upside-down in what has been a wacky autumn of collegiate football.

For the first time in five attempts, Louisville beat South Florida in Tampa. Riding the arm of freshman quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, the Cardinals rallied from a 17-3 first half deficit to put away the Bulls in convincing fashion. The win give Louisville at least a tie for the Big East title and keeps alive flickering hopes of being the conference’s BCS bowl representative in January at the Orange Bowl in Miami. The Cardinals overcame a slew of first half mistakes (missed field goal, caught with wrong personnel on the field on fourth down) and timely trick plays from Skip Holtz (a halfback pass out of the wildcat formation for a touchdown) to get the much needed win.

The win followed the typical Louisville fashion. The Cardinals fell behind early, before rallying on the passing of Bridgewater. Bridgewater finished with 241 yards through the air and three touchdown passes. Bridgewater’s primary target has been a fellow freshman, DeVante Parker. Parker caught two of Bridgewater’s three touchdown passes, one that cut the lead to 17-10 shortly before halftime and the other that put the game out of reach in the fourth quarter.

With the win, the Cardinals finished the season 5-1 after a disastrous 2-4 start that included embarrassing home losses to FIU and Marshall. Louisville, in coach Charlie Strong’s second season, could go from being a non-bowl team (in 2009) to an Orange Bowl participant if Cincinnati loses to Connecticut on Dec. 3.

On the other side of the divide, the outlook is much less hopeful. Now at 5-6, South Florida will need an upset of West Virginia on Thursday to become bowl eligible. USF has never won a Big East championship, and that’s enough of a source of disappointment in the central western region of the state of Florida. However, the notion of not even making a bowl game would represent a substantial failure for Holtz, a credentialed coach who was supposed to make the Bulls far better than they currently are. Holtz arrived at South Florida with plenty of fanfare after making East Carolina the top team in Conference USA. If the Bulls don’t win this Thursday against West Virginia, the offseason – though never cold in Tampa – will certainly be long and difficult.

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By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer