Louisville head coach says it would be "incredible" to beat Clemson

Satterfield will need a big game from his QB Malik Cunningham. (Photo: Jamie Rhodes / USATODAY)

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Fri Nov 05 08:00:05 GMT-04:00 2021

Louisville’s football team sits at 4-4 on the season and is staring a wounded Clemson team in the face. Cardinals head coach Scott Satterfield is hoping that homefield advantage will play a big role when the teams tangle on Saturday.

Louisville and Clemson will meet for the seventh time in school history, with the Tigers winning the first six games of the series. Louisville is 0-3 all-time at Cardinal Stadium versus Clemson. The game is scheduled for 7:30 pm Saturday night in Cardinal Stadium.

Louisville and NC State played a tight matchup last week before the Wolfpack were able to pull away for a 28-13 victory. This week, it’s the Tigers coming to town, a program that Satterfield says is used to winning.

“We’re playing a team that’s played for and won many national championships and has a lot of tradition there. They’re used to winning,” Satterfield said earlier this week. “This year, they have not done as well as they have done in the past when you think about it because they were so dominant the last seven or eight years and this year, they’ve had a lot of close games and they’ve lost a few. They played a Georgia team, which I think everybody thinks Georgia is one of the top teams in the country and have been playing that way, 10-3, and then a lot of close games.”

Satterfield said that while the Clemson offense has struggled, the defense has been its usual self.

“Offensively, they’ve not put up the numbers they’ve been used to putting up. They have a lot of new players on that side of the ball,” he said. “Defensively, they’re still one of the best defenses in the country. I think they’re No. 3 in the country in scoring defense. They’ve had a lot of injuries and still rank really high defensively, holding teams in single digits and teens. As you watch the film, very impressive on that side of the ball. (James Skalski) has played a lot of football, he’s the quarterback on the defense, he can probably call the defenses. He knows it so well and he’s still playing at a high level.

"I think their D-line is impressive. They did have some injuries there but, they still have some great players that cause havoc upfront. The biggest thing that they do well on their defense is just the multiple things they do on defense and the way they play it. We’re excited about the opportunity of hosting these guys and playing at 7:30 and look forward to having a great crowd here, a crowd that we can feed off this weekend; we’ll need it.”

Satterfield said he is looking for a home field advantage to put the Cards on top.

“It’s extremely beneficial. It’s a home field advantage. I just think about last week, as I mentioned, that first drive down in Raleigh, we’re on the one-yard line, it’s fourth and one and we get a false start penalty because it was so loud in that corner of the endzone and the play we had called, it looked like it would have been a touchdown,” he said. “That’s a huge difference in the game. That’s what a home field advantage can do for you, and we need to have it. We need to have our fans to be here, to be loud, to be all engaged into the game and it can be, we certainly can be that here, we’ve been that way here. We have to encourage the fans to come out support us. We’re going to have some great recruits that are going to be here this weekend from a lot of different parts of the United States and that’ll be awesome for the recruits to come in and see a huge crowd and to see how loud it is and see what kind of great environment this is to play in.”

He also knows what a win over the Tigers would mean for his program.

“It would be awesome to get a win. It’s a team, as I mentioned, that’s won national championships, played for it a bunch of times, and basically just run through the ACC over the last seven or eight years and have not lost very many games and to be able to beat a team like that this year would be incredible,” Satterfield said. “It would be great for our program; it would be great for our guys. They are a brand that everybody knows throughout the country, and if comes across the ticker that Louisville won the game then that’s huge in a lot of aspects, not only just for the win purposes, but also for the program moving forward in recruiting and all of those aspects that are part of the program so it would obviously be a huge win for us.”