After two straight weeks of disappointing showings, #24 West Virginia Mountaineers (6-2) look to get back to their dominate ways against a young but talented Louisville Cardinals (4-4) team at Milan Puskar Stadium. West Virginia is coming off a comeback win against Rutgers in which they were outplayed for the better part of the first three quarters.
“I’m proud of how the guys responded to a very difficult situation. We went in knowing that it was going to be challenging. We couldn’t have prepared for the weather, but we didn’t use it as an excuse. We went in and wanted to win a little bit more than theywanted to win. It was a challenging situation. It was a good team, on the road. We were down at halftime and had the opportunity to quit. As a team, we had the chance to quit, but we didn’t. There were a lot of things that we overcame and the fact that we won the game says a lot about the character of our football team,” coach Holgorsen said during his weekly press conference.
Louisville has been very good defensively this season, but their problems have come on the offensive side of the ball. The Cardinals currently rank 113th in the FBS in scoring (17.6 ppg) and 103rd in total offense (329.4 ypg). The Cardinals start freshman Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback and he put up good numbers last week at Syracuse. Bridgewater went 17-24 for 198 yards and 2 touchdowns in the win versus the Orange. The Cardinals are riding a two-game winning streak after losing the previous three.
” Like we all know,every week in the BIG EAST is challenging and Louisville is coming to town on a two-game win streak. They’ve done something in the last two weeks that we haven’t done. They beat Syracuse and Rutgers, which are two pretty good teams. They’ll come in here ready to go,” Holgorsen said about the Cardinals.
The Cardinals ran for an average of 166 yards in their past two contests, which is up 58 yards from their previous six game average. As we know, the run defense has been the Achilles Heel of an otherwise stout West Virginia defense. They will look to focus on running back Victor Anderson who ran for 93-yards last week against Syracuse. Look for Bruce Irvin to have the big game that fans have been waiting for against Louisville.
As for the West Virginia offense, last week Shawne Alston and Tavon Austin stood out as both make explosive plays against the Rutgers defense. With the ever rotating running back system, who will stand out this week? Will it be Dustin Garrison, Alston or Andrew Buie?
“Shawne (Alston) is getting there. We’ve been getting him touches. We’ll keep getting him the ball as long as when he runs it, he keeps going forward,” Holgorsen said of his back.
“We’ve got something for him every week to touch the ball. Going through our reads and throwing it to him, we’ve got something to get it to him. Whether it’s there or not is a whole other story. We want the ball in his hands, but we aren’t going to force it,” Holgorsen said about gameplanning with Tavon Austin.
While the Cardinals have their two-game winning streak in tow, the West Virginia defense is going to be too much for the young, inexperienced offense to handle. With two lackluster performances the past two weeks, look for the Mountaineers to handle the Cardinals fairly easy, 43-17.
Photo Credits: All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks Photo
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