Noise just one challenge Cards face at Clemson
The University of Louisville football team had its welcome-to-the-big-leagues party when it hosted Miami in the 2014 season opener.
It was U of L's Atlantic Coast Conference debut against a program that, despite its big name, has seen better days.
The first true blue-blood ACC test wouldn't come for five more weeks, when U of L traveled to Clemson to take on one of the top college football programs in the country.
That day has arrived.
Louisville and Clemson kick off at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Clemson's Memorial Stadium, with 81,500 fans in the crowd and quite a bit at stake for both teams.
For Clemson, it's a chance to beat the only other team in the ACC's Atlantic Division with a legitimate shot at chasing Florida State for a divisional title. FSU already beat Clemson, which makes Saturday's game pivotal for the Tigers to stay in the division hunt.
For Louisville, this game, much like U of L's Oct. 30 meeting with FSU, is a measuring stick of how the Cardinals' football program stacks up against the biggest of the big boys in the ACC.
"When you looked on the schedule, you said, 'Hey, we get to go play in Death Valley,'" U of L coach Bobby Petrino said, referring to Memorial Stadium's famous nickname.
"These are the types of games that the players we recruit and the guys that are here came to play in."
Petrino called Saturday's game, the first-ever meeting between the programs, the "biggest challenge that our defense has faced," particularly with the emergence of Clemson's freshman quarterback, Deshaun Watson.
Since entering Clemson's 23-17 loss at Florida State in the second quarter, Watson's taken full control of the Tigers' quarterback job.
With Watson at the helm, Clemson's converted nearly 17 percent more third-down attempts. The Tigers' offense ranks in the top 27 in the nation in scoring, passing and total yardage.
In other words, despite two losses to FSU and Georgia, Clemson's lived up to its reputation as an offensive powerhouse. That designation is a big factor in the national perception of the Tigers as a top-flight program.
Before the season started, though, Louisville's players said that while it'll be fun to play teams like Clemson and FSU every year, there's only one way to look at those matchups.
"They can challenge us and we can take the challenge," Louisville linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin said at ACC media day in July, "or we can lay down and let them step on our throat."
Mauldin, a star pass rusher for U of L and one of the top defensive players in the country, maintained his stance this week as Louisville prepped for Saturday.
"I just know that if we get the first stop in the game, we're going to win that game because we as a defense know that (by getting) the first three-and-out, we're in their heads already," he said.
"We know that if we play with a confident defense, pretty much the game is ours."
That's the kind of confidence that helped Louisville beat Florida and Miami in consecutive bowl games over the past two seasons.
Clemson at home, though, is a different animal.
Not only have the Tigers won 10 or more games in each of the past three seasons, including two trips to the Orange Bowl, they also have one of the liveliest home-field advantages in college football.
Clemson is 22-2 at Memorial Stadium over the past four years and 35-6 in Clemson coach Dabo Swinney's seven years in charge.
U of L pumped loud crowd noise into Papa John's Cardinal Stadium on Thursday to prepare for Death Valley. Petrino said this week that playing at Syracuse was a loud test.
But few atmospheres compare to Clemson. A full house on Saturday – 81,500 fans – would be the largest crowd Louisville's played in front of since 2000, when U of L lost 32-0 at FSU in front of 80,741.
That is a major reason why U of L wanted to join a conference like the ACC. Now that moment is here.
"We relish playing on road games," Mauldin said. "We love crowds like that. It's why we come to college to play football."
Reach U of L beat writer Jeff Greer at (502) 582-4044 and follow him on Twitter (@jeffgreer_cj).