Wake Forest is on the verge of history, and the Demon Deacons have had extra time to think about it.
Coming off an open date, No. 19 Wake Forest attempts to collect program history by winning its eighth consecutive game.
Five victories came this season, marking the program’s fourth 5-0 record to begin a season.
All this goes on the line Saturday night against visiting Louisville in an Atlantic Coast Conference game.
“Most teams don’t play well coming off a bye week, so that’s a challenge and we shared that with our team,” Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson said. “That will be two weeks since we played football and we’ve got to be ready to go early because this is too good of a football team to fall behind to.”
Wake Forest holds its highest ranking since rising to No. 16 in 2008.
Both teams had their last outings against Boston College, with Wake Forest (1-0 ACC) defeating the Eagles 27-24 before their open date.
Louisville (3-2, 1-1) snapped a nine-game conference losing streak last week by topping Boston College 41-39.
But things will become more difficult for Louisville. The Wake Forest game marks the first of three consecutive assignments against teams currently in the national rankings, with Clemson and Virginia up next.
“We’ve learned a lot about our football team in the last two weeks,” Louisville coach Scott Satterfield said. “Going back to Florida State being down 21-0, a lot of teams fold right there. We didn’t.”
The game marks a return to Satterfield’s home state; he was the coach at Appalachian State before joining the Cardinals this season.
Louisville has exceeded its 2018 win total by one, but there’s a long ways to go.
“I would love to be better than where we are right now,” Satterfield said. “To me, success for this season will be effort on game day, how we go out and play, the consistency that we play with. … These guys are now seeing the fruit of that labor and that hard work. We have to continue to do that. We’re nowhere near where we need to be.”
Louisville running back Javian Hawkins is the third freshman in school history to have three 100-yard rushing games in the first five games of a season. He had a season-high 172 yards on the ground last week against Boston College.
The Cardinals racked up 664 yards of total offense against Boston College.
“Their ability to make explosive plays will make this as big of a challenge as we have had in the secondary,” Clawson said. “They had 12 plays of over 20 yards against BC.”
Wake Forest quarterback Jamie Newman leads the ACC and is fourth nationally with 356.6 yards of total offense per game. The 6-foo4 junior has completed 117 of 168 passes for 1,521 yards, with 14 touchdowns and three interceptions.
“He’s got a big arm and is a big guy,” Satterfield said. “He can run. He’s a total package and I think he is playing that way right now.”
Louisville leads the series 4-2, although Wake Forest has won the last two meetings.
This marks one of only two games in October for Wake Forest, which meets Florida State next week.
