LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – It’s a tough thing, beating the No. 2 team in the country on the road. Hard to accomplish. Even harder to handle. One weekend you’re shocking the world. The next you wake up and you’re still you.
Louisville spent a week hearing from most of the country how good it was. Saturday night at L&N Stadium, the No. 19 Cardinals spent half the game trying to prove the country wrong.
The narrative coming in was simple enough to fit on a whiteboard: Can Jeff Brohm’s team handle success without immediately tripping over it? In Brohm’s four previous games after knocking off a Top 5 opponent, his teams were 0-4. That’s not a trend. That’s muscle memory.
For a long, queasy game, Boston College (1-7), a team winless in the ACC, kept itself in position to make it 0-5 until the closing minutes.
Louisville, who came into the game favored by 25.5 points – walked away with a 38-24 victory. The scoreboard will say the Cardinals are still building something. The tape will say they better keep those wrenches handy.
In the meantime, they have Isaac Brown. Without him, the offense would've been declared missing by halftime.
Brown was the best player on the field – a handy tool to have. He touched the ball five times in the first half and went 151 yards with it. Everybody else in the same uniform ran 16 plays for 105 yards and polite applause.
They should’ve taken up an NIL collection at halftime.
Louisville needed him because almost nothing else survived the flight home from Miami.
The defense, which spent last week in Miami playing like it was auditioning for a documentary, spent the first half doing Boston College small favors. It gave up scoring drives of 55 and 75 yards. It couldn’t get off the field on third down, letting the Eagles convert 6 of their first 11.
When Louisville did flash, it didn’t last: one 73-yard Isaac Brown run set up a one-yard Miller Moss plunge, and just like that the Cards briefly led 7-3, then trailed 10-7, then had to act like a top-20 team again.
Moss eventually got them back in front with a 56-yard march that ended in a nine-yard run of his own to make it 14-10. Then Brown went full emergency services. After a three-and-out, he bent the corner, hit the outside, and just left. Sixty-two yards later, with 1:02 left in the half, he was in the end zone and Boston College was in a crisis meeting.
Louisville went into the locker room looking like it had finally found the fire extinguisher.
Then it dropped it.
The Cardinals got the ball to open the second half. First offensive touch of the half, Brown fumbled. Boston College inherited the ball at the Louisville 23 and needed two blinks to score. Suddenly it was 21-17, and every “they’ve turned the corner” paragraph from Miami felt like it needed a lawyer.
To their credit, Louisville did answer. It wasn’t clean — in fact it was hilariously not clean. The teams traded interceptions on back-to-back plays in Boston College territory. Louisville got the better end. Moss hit Caullin Lacy for a 22-yard touchdown to make it 28-17, and the building finally exhaled.
But here’s the problem with acting like a grown-up: you have to finish like one.
Up 28-17 with just over 12 minutes left, Louisville had a chance to slam the door.
On third-and-5, Moss was sacked and fumbled, a turnover gift-wrapped for Boston College near midfield. That was when Kalib Perry bailed them out with an interception on the Eagles’ second play of the drive, the defensive equivalent of diving across the table to keep the good china from hitting the floor.
That was the night in miniature. Louisville wasn’t driving the game so much as keeping it from going over a guardrail. And the dishes weren’t yet safe.
A Cooper Ranvier field goal put Louisville up 31-17, but Boston College wasn’t finished. It drove 68 yards in eight plays and got a 21-yard TD pass to pull within six. Making things more iffy – Louisville’s offense couldn’t answer. Three and out, and Boston College got it back.
The Cards’ defense held again – and the offense had another chance to put things away. This time it responded. Three-yard run by KeJuan Brown. Eight-yard run by Isaac Brown. Then on third down, Moss rolled to his right and found Jaleel Skinner open downfield for 18 yards and a first down.
Three plays later, KeJuan Brown sprinted 67 yards for a touchdown. Ballgame.
But some of the shiny “fixed” stuff from Miami? Wobbly again.
The defense that looked so composed in South Florida gave up long drives. The offensive line that looked so grown-up last week gets mixed reviews. It let Moss see a little more pressure than comfortable, but opened significant running holes, and those eventually won the game. The quick passing game that made Miami chase shadows sagged back toward 50-50 balls and hope.
Moss wasn’t sharp. He completed just over 50 percent of his throws, with one touchdown and one interception. For long chunks, the offense wasn’t even on the field. Because of Brown’s long run and Boston College’s ball-control approach, the Eagles ran 23 plays in the first quarter. Louisville ran three.
Moss had a better second quarter, throwing for 74 yards, but half of that came on one 38-yard strike. This was not a quarterback carving up the defense. This was a quarterback hanging on.
Fortunately for Louisville, Isaac Brown was not interested in hanging on.
He carried 14 times for 205 yards. That’s more than 14 yards a carry. He’s the first Louisville player to run for more than 200 since Malik Cunningham ran for 224 at Duke in 2021.
Brown, in the end, was the difference. More than poise or polish, it was one running back who refused to let the night turn into a lesson.
Louisville did finish the game with 506 yards of offense and 319 rushing yards. The secondary came up with two interceptions. And, late, the Louisville offense put BC into obvious passing the situations, and the defense heated up.
That’s how important starting strong is. Louisville is a very impressive team with a lead. When it opens flat, much less so.
So yes, Louisville did the thing no team had done under Jeff Brohm: it followed a program-shaking upset of a Top 5 team with a win.
That matters. That jinx is in pieces on the floor.
But the postgame mood shouldn’t feel like a parade. It should feel like a warning light.
Because this was the test: Can you handle success?
Not have it. Handle it.
Can you take everything you loved about that Miami win — the pass protection, the swagger in the secondary, the quick-game efficiency, the “we belong on this stage” body language — and pack it, carry it through the metal detector, and unload it in front of 50,000 people when Boston College shows up and doesn’t particularly care who you beat last Friday?
Tonight, Louisville’s answer was: sometimes, if Isaac Brown comes with us.
They get Virginia Tech next. The questions are coming with them.
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