Notre Dame to face Louisville in prime time
With the game time announcement for Week 6 vs. Louisville, Notre Dame will play four games in a row in prime time.
The Irish will face the Cardinals at 7:30 p.m. ET on Oct. 7 at L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium in Louisville, Ky., the teams announced Monday morning. The game will be televised on ABC.
When Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman heard the news during his weekly press conference Monday, he looked down at the lectern, sighed and muttered, “Okay.”
“Just because we’re playing at night versus Duke and versus Louisville, you have to take into consideration when you get home,” Freeman said. “That will change a little bit of the practice structure, but it shouldn’t be too much.”
Louisville enters Week 5 as a 4-0 team, with wins over Georgia Tech, Murray State, Indiana and Boston College, respectively. The Cardinals won home games against Murray State and Boston College in convincing fashion, outscoring the Racers 56-0 and the Eagles 56-28. They won neutral-site games against Georgia Tech and Indiana by slight margins, beating the Yellow Jackets 39-34 and the Hoosiers 21-14.
Those neutral-site games were de facto road games for Louisville, as they played Georgia Tech in Atlanta and Indiana in Indianapolis.
Louisville graduate transfer quarterback Jack Plummer, who followed his old coach at Purdue, Jeff Brohm, to the Cardinals will face Notre Dame for the third season in a row with his third different team. The Irish beat Purdue 27-13 in 2021 and took down Plummer’s California team 24-17 last year.
Plummer is off to a strong start with Louisville, reaching 1,120 yards on 97 attempts (11.5 yards per attempt) in four games. He’s thrown 10 touchdowns to 4 interceptions, and he’s only taken 5 sacks.
Another transfer, redshirt junior wide receiver Jamari Thrash, has been Plummer’s favorite target. Thrash has 19 receptions for 400 yards in his first season after transferring from Georgia State, where he was an honorable mention Phil Steele All-American in 2022.
The Cardinals were second the country with 42 sacks in 2022, and while they only have 5 in four games thus far, a pass rush threat has emerged once again in junior defensive lineman Ashton Gillotte. Gillette has 3 sacks in four games so far, putting him on pace for 9 this season. That would be his career high, beating the 7 he compiled last year.
Louisville received 32 voting points for the Associated Press Top 25 this week. The Cardinals would be No. 29 if the rankings extended that far.
Notre Dame will enter the Louisville game at either 5-1 or 4-2 after its 17-14 loss to Ohio State on the last play. The Irish face an unbeaten Duke team at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday in Durham, N.C., which will host ESPN’s College GameDay in Week 5.
