Kragthorpe wants to stay with Louisville
November 16, 2009
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)—Steve Kragthorpe says he has no plans to quit asLouisville coach amid speculation he might be fired.
Kragthorpe said Monday he “definitely” wants to coach the Cardinals in2010.
“I came here with a plan to be here and I want to continue to be here,”said Kragthorpe, who is 15-19 with the Cardinals in three seasons since takingover for Bobby Petrino.
Louisville (4-6, 1-4) snapped a nine-game losing streak in the Big East withan ugly 10-9 win over Syracuse, a game in which the Cardinals managed 151 yardsof offense.
Yet Kragthorpe praised his team’s toughness in finding a way to pull it out,something that he said hasn’t happened often enough after he took over a teamcoming off an Orange Bowl victory.
“Although we haven’t won as many games as we wanted to, we’ve been veryclose in a lot of games this year and I don’t think we’re that far away frombeing the kind of team we want to be, and that’s a team that competes for thechampionship,” Kragthorpe said.
Maybe, but the program hardly resembles the one that lit up scoreboardsacross the conference under Petrino.
Louisville enters Saturday’s game at South Florida (6-3, 2-3) last in theleague in scoring offense (18.1 points per game) and pass efficiency offense(114.5) and seventh in total offense (339.4 yards per game) and rushing offense(137.3 ypg).
Kragthorpe—who added offensive coordinator duties to his list ofresponsibilities in the offseason—knows his team has to be better ifLouisville has any chance at keeping its remote bowl hopes alive.
“I think the biggest thing is I’ve got to get that ball in the playmakers’hands,” Kragthorpe said. “That’s the thing we want to do on offense, so we’vegot to put those guys in positions where we can get them matched up, we’ve justgot to be more consistent in doing that.”
A little bit of consistency at quarterback would help. Louisville hasstarted three players—junior college transfer Adam Froman, junior Justin Burkeand redshirt freshman walk-on Will Stein—under center this season.
Froman started against the Orange, his first action since a loss atCincinnati last month. He completed 9 of 18 passes for 117 yards with onetouchdown and one interception, and will start against the Bulls.
“We’ve played so many different quarterbacks we’d like to try to settle inon a quarterback to where we can get him more repetitions in practice and gethim settled in and ready to play,” Kragthorpe said. “Adam did some very goodthings the other day, but you could tell he was just a little bit rusty justbecause he hadn’t played in three weeks.”
Froman, who was sacked a handful of times on Saturday, said he can’t reallyexplain the offense’s funk.
“As a team you go through certain phases where everything is clicking,things are good, then you go through phases where things just aren’t quitematching up,” Froman said. “That’s kind of what the offense has been goingthrough the last couple of weeks, just not firing on all cylinders. Just onelittle thing here and there.”