Louisville's Defense Comes Up Big in Victory Over Indiana

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Through the first two weeks of the Louisville football program's season, a large part of their early success had been their offensive prowess. After all, they had put up a combined 95 points and 1,164 yards of offense against Georgia Tech and Murray State.

But another reason for their 2-0 start was because of their defensive efforts. While it was inconsistent in their matchup against Indiana on Saturday, it was arguably the driving force behind the Cardinals' 21-14 victory to remain undefeated in their first season under head coach Jeff Brohm.

"It's great to come out with a win," Brohm said. "I thought our guys competed hard for four quarters. It was touch-and-go in the second half, but we found a way to toughen it up when we needed to, and to get a great stop. Tremendous job by our defense and our coaches."

The matchup of the regional rivals was won on a crucial goal line stand in the game's final minutes. Louisville entered halftime with a 21-0 lead, but Indiana cut that advantage with a pair of second half scores, and were looking for the equalizer with less than five minutes to go.

For a moment, it looked like Hoosiers might get it. Facing 3rd and goal from the eight yard line, quarterback Tayven Jackson scrambled after facing pressure, rolled to his right and reached for the pylon in a fashion similar to a memorable recent play by IU.

Jackson was instead marked short at the 1.5-yard line, but Indiana had one more chance on fourth down. They called a timeout and loaded up on offensive linemen. Louisville countered by loading up on defensive linemen and linebackers, and were ready for a goal line stand.

"We worked on our goal line package, we had a lot of big bodies in there," Brohm said. "We stemmed at the last minute to try to get them to snap at early. I don't know if it affected a little bit or not, but we got in there."

Jackson snapped the ball, and handed it to running back Josh Henderson. Almost immediately, the Louisville defensive linemen - in particular Jared Dawson and Stephen Herron - blew up the Indiana offensive line. This allowed linebacker T.J. Quinn to come off the edge for a clean shot at Henderson short of the goal line, with fellow linebacker Stanquan Clark helping clean up the play with a tackle assist.

Following the turnover on downs, Louisville was able to successfully run out the clock and escape Lucas Oil Stadium with a win.

"We just knew we had to get to stop," Quinn said. "That was that was a game right there. When they called the timeout, we said we had to stay together, we had to play low and we get the stop. That was the only conversation we had."

The defense set the tone right out of the gates as well. Indiana was held scoreless in the first half, and only put up 107 yards of offense in the process. Of their five first half drives, four of them ended in punts, three failed to cross midfield, and one ended in an interception to safety Cam'Ron Kelly.

"We've just got to keep on stacking good days on good day, and good games on good games," Kelly said, who had a game-high 12 tackles plus two for loss. "You build the foundation off of that, and you keep going. You play like that and we stop them, they can't score and they don't win. That's how we're gonna do it."

Of course, like their offensive counterparts, the defense wasn't perfect against IU. While they excelled on that side of the line of scrimmage in the first half, Louisville's defense was very inconsistent in the second.

This was particularly the case in the third quarter, where the pressure from the defensive line had all but disappeared, and allowed Jackson to get comfortable throwing the football down the field. Both of the Hoosiers' scoring drives came in this period, and Jackson threw for 154 yards in the third quarter alone - accounting for over half of his 299 passing yards for the game.

"We have some packages together to get pressure," Brohm said. "Yes, there have been times where maybe we'd like to get more. I think we called some single dogs or blitzes by linebackers, didn't land a whole lot. They were able to get the ball out quick. Probably not a whole lot of all-out blitzes, which we have a plan for that every game, but you got to be a little cautious and careful.

"Sometimes when you get a big lead, you probably pull back on that naturally more than you like to, even though we're trying to still play aggressive. I just think that we got to continue to work on it."

But in the end, it was mostly a success for the Louisville defense, and one that ended on a high note. Indiana finished the game with only 357 yards of offense, standout running back Jaylin Lucas was held to 29 rushing yards (although he countered with 10 catches for 98 yards), and the Hoosiers as a whole ran for only 58 yards.

There is still work to be done with Louisville now shifting back into conference play, but Brohm likes that his team - both the offense and defense - have shown that they have the ability to fight back when their backs are against the wall.

"I like the make up of our guys," he said. "They really play hard, they work hard, they're coachable. I think our coaches are tough enough to realize that we make a lot of mistakes too, and we got to fix those every week, and put our players in the best position to succeed. We'll have to continue to make corrections from this week.

"But, that's a great starting point. If we can figure out a way to be just a little more efficient for 60 minutes and not have lapses, then maybe we can have a big win. But until then, it'll be a back and forth affair, and we gotta be the tougher team in order to come out with a win."

(Photo of Cam'Ron Kelly: Trevor Ruszkowski - USA TODAY Sports)

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