The bye week gives Louisville a chance to look around the ACC and size up the road to Charlotte.
The Cardinals enter the week sitting alone in sixth place in the league at 3-2. The mess around them is very real, too: nine teams are bunched together with two conference losses, and that congestion is eventually going to sort itself out. Louisville still has five games left, including home dates with Stanford and Pittsburgh and road trips to Georgia Tech, North Carolina and Kentucky.
Wake Forest and Florida State are also off this week.
So while Louisville waits, the scoreboard-watching job is simple: hope a few results shake loose the standings. If everything breaks the right way, the Cardinals would be up to third in the league and one game behind Miami heading into the Halloween matchup with Stanford.
Here’s the weekend slate Louisville should be tracking.
The biggest one is California at SMU. A Mustangs loss would push SMU to 3-2 in conference play, which would give Louisville the edge thanks to the head-to-head win earlier this season.
Rhett Lashlee’s offense hasn’t exactly been rolling the last couple of weeks, but Cal is also coming off a 41-7 loss to Wake Forest. There’s another reason this one matters: Wake Forest and SMU still have to play each other Nov. 14 in Dallas, and with both teams sitting on one conference loss, Louisville benefits if either one starts stacking defeats.
Right now, those two are the main challengers to Miami for a spot in the conference title game.
The next result on the wish list is Virginia Tech at Clemson. The Hokies have been up and down in ACC play at 2-2, while Clemson’s conference wins have come only against Cal and North Carolina.
Dabo Swinney’s team still sits ahead of Louisville in the standings, and the two teams don’t meet this year. Clemson’s remaining league schedule also looks rough, with Syracuse, FSU, Georgia Tech and Duke still ahead after this weekend.
Pittsburgh at Miami comes next. The No.
1 Hurricanes are 4-0 in the ACC after beating Florida State at home last week, and they still look like the team most likely to reach the title game. But a Pittsburgh win would help Louisville and everyone else keeping an eye on the top of the standings.
The Panthers have dropped two straight with a backup quarterback, which is part of why this one sits lower on the list. Still, any ground lost by Miami matters, just in case things get weird down the stretch.
Louisville can also keep tabs on Syracuse against North Carolina. Bill Belichick, Bobby Petrino, and the Tar Heels are 2-1 and have been good enough to make this a tricky matchup.
Because Louisville has the head-to-head with UNC, a Tar Heels win wouldn’t be the end of the world, but a Syracuse victory would still help the Cardinals. The Orange are winless against power-four opposition, and Carolina gets Miami next week.
Duke at Virginia is another game with conference implications, even though the Blue Devils and Cavaliers are not on Louisville’s schedule. If either one falls to three losses, it effectively knocks them out of ACC title contention.
Duke already has the tallest climb with just one conference loss, while Virginia reaching three defeats this early would be hard to recover from. Duke won this one 19-16.
Finally, Louisville had reason to watch NC State at Stanford. The Wolfpack already own the head-to-head, but another loss would make it even tougher for them to climb back into the race. The Cardinal won this one 31-28.
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