Louisville football: 5 things to take from Notre Dame into EKU

In the first game of the new Louisville football era, the Cards battled hard against the no. 9 ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish. What can we take away and carry into Saturday’s matchup with EKU?

With just five days in between games, Louisville football will look to carry the momentum from an electric environment on Monday night’s matchup with no.9 Notre Dame into Saturday’s showdown with in-state foe, Eastern Kentucky.

There were a lot of positive things to take away from how the Cards battled against one of the country’s top teams in their first performance under new head coach Scott Satterfield.

All spring and summer we heard Scott Satterfield talk about effort and buying in, and it was easy to see within minutes of Louisville taking the field, all the way up until the end of the game that the players were on the same page.

While there were issues on both sides of the ball, that’s to be expected when a team like Louisville goes head-to-head with a bigger, stronger, and more experienced football team. Still, Louisville fought and won a lot of battles in a way that no one really expected.

They played extremely tough on defense, holding Notre Dame to just five third-down conversions out of 12 total attempts. Offensively they ran the ball for 249 yards and two touchdowns against a team that gave up just 133 yards on average per game in 2018.

Now with just two days until the Cards take the field again, I wanted to take a look back at the biggest takeaways from Monday’s 35-17 loss to Notre Dame and how they’ll carry over into Saturday’s matchup with FCS opponent EKU (which you can read Kyle Brown’s preview here).