CLEMSON, S.C. — Malik Cunningham is haunted by last year’s loss to Clemson. It is a game the Louisville quarterback thinks the Cardinals should have won.
“That Clemson game, there’s not a day that goes by I don’t think about that,” Cunningham said back at ACC Media Days this past July. “They know it. They know they slipped away. You ask Coach [Dabo] Swinney right now, he’ll tell you they were on the ropes for sure.”
Louisville had first-and-goal at the Clemson 2-yard line with 61 seconds remaining in the game. They ran four consecutive plays and could not get the ball in the end zone, including Cunningham slipping at the 4-yard line on four-and-goal, as he tried to run the ball in.
Cunningham vowed he would get the Tigers back. He felt they were the better team last season and they let the opportunity slip away.
“It wasn’t the best version of Louisville. It was not us,” he said.
The Cardinals (6-3, 3-3 ACC) come into Saturday’s game at Memorial Stadium playing their best football. They have won four straight games, earning impressive victories over Virginia, Pitt, Wake Forest and James Madison. They won those four games by an average of 20.5 points.
Though Cunningham is more than capable of throwing the football, it is his ability to run that has the 10th-ranked Tigers worried. Last year, he had touchdown runs of 23 and 51 yards in Clemson’s 30-24 victory.
“You give him a little bit of daylight, he can take it to the crib,” Clemson defensive tackle Tyler Davis said. “It’s definitely going to be a great matchup.”
It also does not help that Louisville is averaging more than 200 yards a game on the ground as team and is getting production from its running backs. Louisville ranks 25th nationally in rushing at 201.7 yards per game.
Last week marked the Cardinals third-highest output this season, led by Tiyon Evans’ 126 yards on 10 carries including a 71-yard TD.
Jawhar Jordan added 17 carries for 117 yards and gave the Cardinals their first pair of 100-yard rushers since Sept. 2, 2012 against Kentucky.
That is bad news for Clemson (8-1, 6-0 ACC) who gave up a season-high 263 rushing yards last week to a Notre Dame team that cannot throw the football with any consistency. In the previous two games, the Tigers gave up 234 rushing yards to Florida State and struggled at times to stop Syracuse in the run game as well.
