L’ville’s Kragthorpe focused on present, not rumors

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November 17, 2009

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Steve Kragthorpe says he has no plans to quit as Louisville coach amid speculation he might be fired. Kragthorpe said Monday he “definitely” wants to coach the Cardinals in 2010. “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 taking over for Bobby Petrino. Louisville (4-6, 1-4) snapped a nine-game losing streak in the Big East with an ugly 10-9 win over Syracuse, a game in which the Cardinals managed 151 yards of 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 team coming off an Orange Bowl victory. “Although we haven’t won as many games as we wanted to, we’ve been very close in a lot of games this year and I don’t think we’re that far away from being the kind of team we want to be, and that’s a team that competes for the championship,” Kragthorpe said. Maybe, but the program hardly resembles the one that lit up scoreboards across the conference under Petrino. Louisville enters Saturday’s game at South Florida (6-3, 2-3) last in the league 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 of responsibilities in the offseason — knows his team has to be better if Louisville 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’ve got to put those guys in positions where we can get them matched up, we’ve just got to be more consistent in doing that.” A little bit of consistency at quarterback would help. Louisville has started three players — junior college transfer Adam Froman, junior Justin Burke and redshirt freshman walk-on Will Stein — under center this season. Froman started against the Orange, his first action since a loss at Cincinnati last month. He completed 9 of 18 passes for 117 yards with one touchdown and one interception, and will start against the Bulls. “We’ve played so many different quarterbacks we’d like to try to settle in on a quarterback to where we can get him more repetitions in practice and get him settled in and ready to play,” Kragthorpe said. “Adam did some very good things the other day, but you could tell he was just a little bit rusty just because he hadn’t played in three weeks.” Froman, who was sacked a handful of times on Saturday, said he can’t really explain 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 quite matching up,” Froman said. “That’s kind of what the offense has been going through the last couple of weeks, just not firing on all cylinders. Just one little thing here and there.” Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.