LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Take a look at the University of Louisville football schedule and you’ll notice it splits into natural thirds – three four-game segments separated by a pair of bye weeks.
“Looking back, when we first got the schedule, it was probably the best I’ve ever had it, where you play four games, have a bye week, then play four more games and have another bye week,” first-year Louisville coach Scott Satterfield said after Tuesday's practice. “This one comes at a good time. We’re dinged up a little bit and this is a great time to get everybody healed up and ready to go as we start, basically, the middle part of the season.”
Louisville is 2-2 after that first segment, with wins over Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky, and double-digit losses to Notre Dame and on the road at Florida State. It went into this bye week down its top two quarterbacks.
Jawon Pass who was the starter entering the season but who has missed the past two games with a foot injury, is back in practice but limited. Malik Cunningham, who has started the past two games, is out with an ankle injury but is improving daily, Satterfield said, and is expected back to workouts by Sunday, at least. In the meantime, freshman Evan Conley is getting all the practice reps, and benefiting from it.
Freshman Evan Conley awaits a snap in Louisville's win over WKU
“He’s gotten a ton of reps this week and has looked good, and the more he gets the better, obviously, he is,” Satterfield said. “It’s really a great thing for him, and he loves it. You know, some guys might say I’m getting too many, but he loves it, he relishes the fact that he can get all these reps and get better and improve himself, and he’s done a good job these two days of practice.”
Satterfield and his staff came home from Tallahassee feeling they’d missed an opportunity, but ready to go to work on breaking down their own team, self-scouting, and heading back to work on the main issues they’ve seen over the past month.
Job No. 1 when Satterfield arrived was getting the team to play hard and compete, and the team has accomplished that, in all four games.
With no game Saturday, Satterfield has gone back to work on fundamentals, on eliminating mistakes, and on demanding consistency.
“One play we’ll look ready to play, the next play we don’t,” he said. “We’ve got to find more consistency across the board. It’s not just one group or one position, it’s a lot of different places. And if one guy messes up here, it screws up the whole team for that one play. We’ve just got to do a better job of developing consistency. . . . It’s all of us. It’s coaches, players, everyone being consistent, and really not relaxing. Sometimes you go through practice and think, ‘OK, I can not focus as much right here,’ but it’s every play you have to maintain that.”
Satterfield has done some things to try to help players from getting too comfortable. He has shortened some practices, and some meetings, just hoping to do things in a way to keep players sharp before heading to the next task.
As a team, Louisville has been at its best in the second and third quarters of games this season, outscoring opponents 62-28 in the middle of games. But in the first quarter Louisville has broken even, 35-35, and in the fourth is being outscored 28-24.
Four games in, Satterfield remains pleased with his team’s effort. If, during this bye week, it can begin to eliminate mistakes, it can take another step in the season’s second segment.
“We’re playing hard,” Satterfield said. “That was one of our main goals to go out and compete. And we’re doing that. We’re playing hard. And I commend our guys for that. That’s the one thing we wanted, playing hard. And now eliminating mistakes. Because if you play hard, like Saturday at Florida State, if you eliminate the mistakes we have a real good chance to win that football game. Even with those mistakes – and there were a lot of them -- in the fourth quarter we have the lead. . . . So if you play hard, without mistakes, you give yourself a really good chance.”
Louisville returns to action a week from Saturday at home against Boston College in a 12:30 p.m. kickoff.
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