UVA Heads to the "Derby City" on Saturday for ACC Tilt with Louisville

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Nov. 9, 2015

Virginia Continues ACC Roadtrip at Louisville on Saturday
• Virginia continues its ACC road tour on Saturday against the Louisville Cardinals. Kickoff is set for 12:30 p.m. and the game will be televised on regional sports networks. The game will air on Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Cavaliers Making Their Third All-Time Trip to the “Derby City”
• Virginia is making its third-all-time journey to Louisville, Ky., but only its second road game to play the Cardinals. UVA and the Cardinals also met in 1988 at old Cardinal Stadium.
• The Cavaliers first played in the Commonwealth of Kentucky on Nov. 12, 1898 against Vanderbilt. UVA won, 18-0, against the Commodores.
• UVA’s first-ever game in the city of Louisville fell on the same weekend 117 years prior to this season’s meeting in Derby City with the Cardinals.
• With the help of the University of Louisville’s Archives and Special Collections, and the Nov. 13, 1898 edition of Louisville’s Courier-Journal, it was determined the game was played at Fontaine Ferry Park, which was slightly south of the terminus of Market Street near the Ohio River.
• Fontaine Ferry gets its name from a family of French Huguenot descents that settled in Louisville in the early 1800s and operated a ferry across the Ohio River. By 1898, under new ownership, the grounds housed a hotel, velodrome, outdoor restaurant, bandstand and grandstand for events like football. In the early 1900s, Fontaine Ferry became Louisville’s premier amusement park. In 1997 the $1.2 million Shawnee Park Sports Complex was built on the former Fontaine Ferry site.
• According to the Nov. 13, 1898 edition of Louisville’s Courier-Journal, the UVA football team attended “The Royal Box” at Macauley’s Theatre after the win over Vanderbilt. The theatre was located on Walnut Street, which is current day Muhammad Ali Boulevard. It was reported that the squad occupied three boxes and they filed in “to a ripple of applause” from the audience. According to Louisville’s Courier-Journal, each player wore a big yellow chrysanthemum and a “large streamer of orange and blue.”

Virginia vs. Louisville Series History
• Saturday marks the fourth time in series history the Cavaliers and Cardinals have met in football and the second time in ACC play.
• All three games in the series were won in the closing minutes on field goals.
• The two schools first met at Louisville in 1988, a 30-28 Cardinal win. Louisville kicker Ron Bell connected on a 39-yard field goal with 10 seconds left in the game to give the Cardinals the triumph at Old Cardinal Stadium. UVA had led Louisville 28-14 after scoring on its opening drive of the second half. But Louisville scored 16 unanswered points to snatch the victory away from the Cavaliers.
• The tables were flipped when the series moved to Charlottesville in 1989. Jake McInerney kicked a 37-yard field goal as time expired to lift UVA over Louisville, 16-15.
• McInerney’s kick is one of two field goals in UVA history to win a game with zeros on the clock. The most recent was in 2011 when Robert Randolph chipped a 23-yard game-winner at Indiana.
• Current UVA defensive end Mike Moore’s father, Shawn, gave UVA a 13-9 lead with his 4-yard passing strike to Herman Moore in the closing seconds before halftime. Louisville used two fourth-quarter field goals to build a 15-13 lead before McInerney’s heroics.
• On UVA’s game-winning drive, Shawn Moore orchestrated the offense on a 10-play, 60-yard drive, to set up McInerney’s field goal. The drive included a 25-yard quarterback draw by Moore as the UVA signal caller accumulated for 40 yards during the drive with his own legs.
• PK Ian Frye’s 42-yard field goal with 1:24 left won the game for the Cavaliers in 2014. Frye’s field goal is the third-longest game-winning field goal in UVA program history.

It’s a Commonwealth and Not a State
• UVA and Louisville hail from two of the four constituent states of the United States of America that officially uses the name “Commonwealth” instead of the word state in all references.
• In addition to Virginia and Kentucky, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are also Commonwealths.
• The ACC boasts members in all four Commonwealths. UVA already played in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania this season, visiting Pitt on Oct. 10.

Louisville is UVA’s Yearly ACC Atlantic Division Foe
•The ACC said so long to Maryland when Louisville joined the league on July 1, 2014. Maryland had served as UVA’s annual Atlantic Division crossover opponent every season since the ACC created the division format in 2005.
• Louisville not only takes Maryland’s spot in the Atlantic Division, but also serves as UVA’s annual crossover opponent.

Cavaliers To Play on FieldTurf for First Time Since 2013
• UVA is playing on an artificial surface for only the fifth time in the Mike London era and for the first time since playing on Maryland’s new FieldTurf in 2013.
• The other three UVA games on an artificial surface under Mike London came at Boston College in 2010, at Indiana in 2011 and against Auburn in the 2011 Chick-fil-A Bowl at the Georgia Dome.
• FieldTurf won’t be new to the Cavaliers since they practice on it each day at the McCue Center.

UVA vs. Teams from the Bluegrass state
• Virginia has played seven games against teams from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
• UVA is 4-3 all-time against teams from the “Bluegrass State.”
• UVA played Centre College from Danville, Ky., at Lambeth Field in Charlottesville in 1919, a 49-7 loss.
• UVA played Kentucky in 1902, 1903 and 1930. The 1902 and 1930 games against the Wildcats were played in Lexington, Ky., while the 1903 meeting was in Charlottesville.
• Including the 1898 meeting in Louisville between UVA and Vanderbilt, Saturday is the Cavaliers’ fifth all-time game in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

UVA-Louisville Connections
• There are a couple connections between Louisville and UVA.
• UVA offensive line coach Dave Borbely returns to Louisville where he was the running game coordinator and offensive line coach on Charlie Strong’s 2010-13 staffs. He attended four bowl games with the Cardinals, including the 2013 Sugar Bowl win over Florida.
• UL head coach Bobby Petrino coached on the same Weber State staff as UVA special teams coordinator and running backs coach Larry Lewis.
• Lewis was the outside linebackers coach at Weber State from 1981-85, while Petrino was a graduate assistant in 1984.
• Petrino returned for two years, 1987-88, as the wide receivers coach. Lewis at that point had become the defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator.
• When Petrinio was the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, he coached former UVA standout Jason Snelling.
• The first two meetings between UVA and Louisville, the Cardinals head coach was Howard Schnellenberger. Current UVA associate head coach and linebackers coach Mike Archer was on Schnellenberger’s Miami staff from 1979-83, which included the Hurricanes’ first National Championship season in 1983.
• A nice UVA tie to the Kentucky Derby involves alum Hollis B. Chenery. He earned a masters degree in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia. Chenery’s sister, Penny, raced Secretariat on behalf of the family after their father passed. Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby in 1973 on the way to the Triple Crown. After Secretariat’s victory in the Belmont Stakes, Hollis Chenery led the horse down the walkway to the winner’s circle as cameras took pictures and the crowd gave a standing ovation.