LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The University of Louisville’s fourth consecutive bowl trip will be its fourth straight in a distant locale. The Cardinals, who finished the regular season with an 8-4 record, are expected to face Washington in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl in El Paso on New Year’s Eve at 2 p.m. on CBS.
An official announcement from the bowl is expected this afternoon.
Drive time to the Sun Bowl is estimated at 21 hours (1,470 miles). It’s the fourth straight to require at least a 12-hour drive for fans who would like to make the land journey. The last time Louisville played within easy driving range for a bowl game was the 2019 Music City Bowl in Nashville.
Nonetheless, a fourth straight bowl game is an accomplishment for a Louisville program that took little time to return to respectability after going 2-10 in Bobby Petrino’s final season.
It will be Louisville’s second trip to the Sun Bowl. The first was the school’s very first bowl appearance, in 1958. Louisville beat Drake that day, 34-20, to finish the season 8-1 for coach Frank Camp. The Cardinals’ running back was Lenny Lyles, but he was injured on the first play of the bowl game, and back-up Ken Porco carried 20 times for 119 yards to win MVP honors.
Overall, Louisville is 12-13-1 in bowl games, after last season’s loss to USC in the Holiday Bowl.
The Cardinals will face a Washington team that went 6-6, including 4-5 in its first season in the Big Ten Conference. The teams have never met.
The Huskies lost four of their final six games, including three losses to teams that made the college football playoffs. They lost 41-29 to No. 1 Oregon, 35-6 to No. 3 Penn State and fell 31-17 at No. 9 Indiana.
They played two quarterbacks this season. Senior Will Rogers was the primary starter, throwing for 2,458 yards, 14 touchdowns and seven interceptions on the season, while completing 70 percent of his passes. But freshman Demond Williams started the season finale against Oregon, completing 17 of 20 passes for 201 yards.
Louisville struggled through the middle of its season, losing one-score games against ranked opponents -- at Notre Dame, then at home to SMU and Miami. It then rallied for its first-ever win at Clemson, before a disappointing late-season loss at Stanford.
The Cardinals concluded their campaign with a 41-14 win at rival Kentucky. Freshman running back Isaac Brown ran for 1,074 yards, and graduate transfer quarterback Tyler Shough had the healthiest season of his career, throwing for 3,195 yards and 23 touchdowns with only six interceptions.
Louisville finished just outside the Associated Press Top 25 balloting, as the No. 27 vote getter. The Cardinals also failed to crack the final College Football Playoff rankings after being ranked at various times during the season. They finished the regular season ranked No. 16 by Sagarin.
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