LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) \u2013 This past Monday, Mark Stoops rolled in with swagger. Jeff Brohm looked like he\u2019d been demoted to assistant chess coach.<\/p>\n
Brohm was still stinging from a blowout at SMU, Louisville\u2019s third straight loss. Stoops had just been blown out at Vanderbilt, but appeared to have beaten back the torch-and-pitchfork crowd in Lexington with three wins before that. And he was feeling it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you like it or not, I\u2019m a Kentuckian now,\u201d Stoops said.<\/p>\n
To quote a former Louisville coach, \u201cNot so fast, my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t believe everything your REAL ID tells you. Brohm, the down-in-the-dumps hometown hero who feels every loss like the heat of a thousand suns, beat Kentucky 41-0 Saturday with his Thanksgiving leftovers.<\/p>\n
Stoops thought he was walking into Louisville on solid ground. But Louisville was no trap game. It was a trap door.<\/p>\n
Louisville came into this game held together with ace bandages and hope. And the hope was fraying. By game time, Kentucky actually was the betting favorite. Louisville was missing all of its running backs, its top receiver, two starting linebackers and more. Kentucky was just as banged up but had more available in the playmaker department.<\/p>\n
So, this wasn\u2019t exactly a loaves and fishes miracle that Brohm pulled off. But it was a walk-on running back and converted wide receiver miracle. And it did seem to feed most of the crowd of 50,624 in L&N Stadium.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to say this. If I had to pick any college coach in America to win one big game, it would be Jeff Brohm. Louisville, now, has to find a way to see if it can get him to win 11. But what this team showed, after the past couple of weeks it had, and the injuries it sustained, was a whole lot of character. And that\u2019s a credit to both its players, and its coaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels great. I’m not going to lie,\u201d Brohm said after the game. \u201cI mean, I take losing hard. It\u2019s not fun. But you know that sometimes drives you to just figure it out. And if you got enough people that want to figure it out, you can get things done. So, I credit our team. They stuck together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The game was more guts than game-planning. Miller Moss barely practiced all week. But he came out on game day and threw for three touchdowns. The first play of the game, he completed a 23-yard pass. Louisville would take an early 7-0 lead.<\/p>\n
And Moss didn\u2019t have to carry the load, thanks to a blocked punt, an offensive line that controlled a stout Kentucky defensive front, and a couple of running backs delivered from Amazon on Tuesday. OK, not quite.<\/p>\n
Braxton Jennings has been on the roster all season. A running back. Paying for the privilege. The son of Chris Jennings, who spent some time as an NFL running back. A year ago to the day, he was playing his final game at Ashland Blazer, held to 67 yards by Corbin. On Saturday, he ran for 113 on Kentucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cPut him on scholarship!\u201d somebody yelled after he accepted the MVP trophy from the Lieutenant Governor. Forget that. The kid should’ve had a half-dozen NIL offers by the time he walked off the field. A performance like Saturday\u2019s is better than a scholarship. It\u2019s a scholarship for life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew how big this game was,\u201d said Jennings. \u201cI\u2019ve been watching this game since I was little. \u2026 I\u2019ve got guys I played with who played on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boykins moved from receiver in the summer and waited his turn. The North Hardin product made the most of it with 101 yards rushing.<\/p>\n
Kentucky, meanwhile, could get nothing going. It had 147 yards of offense. I walked farther than that to get back to my car. A lot farther.<\/p>\n
Louisville ripped through Kentucky\u2019s defense like a Black Friday sale rack. Kentucky gave up 440 yards of offense, 258 on the ground.<\/p>\n
Some have suggested to me on social media that Kentucky quit. I would argue that one cannot quit what one did not start. Kentucky entered Louisville\u2019s half of the 50 three times.<\/p>\n
With just under six minutes to play in the third quarter, Louisville intercepted Cutter Boley at its own one-yard line. It would hold the ball for the next two months. Check that \u2014 it would hold the ball for the next 10 \u00bd minutes, grinding its way to a touchdown that for all purposes ended the game, and may well have ended Stoops\u2019 Kentucky tenure.<\/p>\n
In the coaching business, style points matter. It\u2019s one thing to come to Louisville and lose. It\u2019s another thing to come to Louisville and lose like that. To let a team so far down its depth chart that it had to dig through its media guide run all over you?<\/p>\n
How is Kentucky supposed to sell this heading into a second straight offseason with no bowl? You\u2019d need an all-star team of social media influencers. And I\u2019m not talking about Zach Calzada with a stack of Benjamins.<\/p>\n
In the end, it was Louisville\u2019s day. It hasn\u2019t been Louisville\u2019s season. The 8-4 finish falls short of what Louisville wanted for itself. But Saturday\u2019s win shows that the program remains resilient. Somewhere between the lowest of lows and Thanksgiving dinner, the program picked itself up and found a way to keep caring.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been right in it,\u201d Brohm said. \u201cThe fact that we\u2019ve had chances in every game except one \u2014 that\u2019s a good feeling. Now we\u2019ve got to figure out how to get over the hump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turns out, on Saturday, a couple of guys who have played in the shadows all season waiting their turn were the ones who got them there.<\/p>\n
Somebody option that story, quick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stayed up some nights thinking, \u2018When is my opportunity going to come?\u2019\u201d Jennings added. \u201cAnd it came today. It\u2019s a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Louisville didn\u2019t do anything terribly fancy on Saturday. It just played harder, smarter and cleaner than Kentucky. But how did it do that, given how it has played in recent weeks? What inspired that performance? It may not have been anything Brohm said, though he asked reporters to imagine how many times he talked to his team about dumb penalties, then \u201cmultiply it by 20\u201d to get the real number.<\/p>\n
No, that inspiration may have been as much about what Brohm and his staff did, and the way they did it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really liked his vibe today,\u201d Moss said. \u201cHe was just kind of just cutting it loose and I feel like the whole team fed off that energy. I think we could tell how badly he wanted this, and I think the entire team kind of took on that persona.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Louisville keeps taking on that persona, it won\u2019t need miracles to win. Just more Saturdays like this one.<\/p>\n
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