How big is next Thursday’s West Virginia-Louisville football game? Louisville has to build an auxiliary press box to accommodate all of the additional media, including reporters from newspapers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Tampa and San Antonio along with Sports Illustrated, ESPN.com and CBSSportsline.com. The outcome of the game also could play a huge role in USF’s bowl hopes. USF needs as many Big East bowl openings as possible, so based on Louisville’s strength of schedule a WVU win would help the Bulls - as long as they get to six victories. On to this week’s Big East Feast of notes:

LOUISVILLE (7-0, 2-0, bye; home vs. West Virginia, Thursday, Nov. 2)

Shortly after the Louisville Cardinals wrapped up their 28-13 win at Syracuse, attention was immediately turned to the Nov. 2 (Thursday night, ESPN) home date with West Virginia. It’s a battle of unbeaten teams, maybe the Big East’s Super Bowl. And just like the Super Bowl, there’s plenty of time for hype and build-up. Louisville and West Virginia are both off this Saturday, giving the game a full weekend of uninterrupted anticipation. Last season at West Virginia, the Cardinals had a 24-7 lead in the fourth quarter, but the Mountaineers rallied for a 46-44 win in three overtimes, the impetus behind their Big East title and eventual Sugar Bowl victory.
“We could sell out three or four stadiums,” Cardinals athletic director Tom Jurich told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “You don’t get many games between unbeaten top-10 teams at this stage of the season. This is everything we dreamed it would be when we joined the Big East.”
And just to make things more interesting around town, the Mountaineers-Cardinals game, the biggest in school history, is being staged on Breeders’ Cup weekend in Louisville.
EIGHT IS GREAT: Louisville hasn’t been 7-0 since 1925, when it finished 8-0.
BROHM IMPROVING: Junior QB Brian Brohm, in his second game back since returning from a surgically repaired right thumb, was 18 of 26 for 203 yards against Syracuse. Coach Bobby Petrino was concerned by one Brohm throw, a floater into traffic, delivered under pressure, that was intercepted near the end zone by Syracuse.
“I have to trust him to not make a throw like that,” Petrino told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “That’s something Brian Brohm doesn’t do.”
Brohm, injured Sept. 16 against Miami, said he felt “close to 100 percent” and might soon remove his protective splint on the right thumb. Louisville has 11 turnovers in its last four games.
RETURN OF SMITH: Kolby Smith got the first crack at starting tailback, when Michael Bush went down with a season-ending injury in the opener. But he lost the job with poor performance. Even though true freshman Anthony Allen made his second consecutive start, Smith came in against Syracuse to rush for a career-high 165 yards and two touchdowns.
“I haven’t been running the same way I was used to,” Smith told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I was timid. I only have five games left in my career. I want to make the best of it.”

RUTGERS (7-0, 2-0; home vs. Connecticut, Sunday night)

Rutgers began this season with a Heisman Trophy campaign - including video advertisements in Times Square - for senior fullback Brian Leonard, a nice nod to the workmanlike career of a guy who had always done all the little things so well. Now Rutgers has another Heisman candidate - a legitimate one. Sophomore tailback Ray Rice had 225 yards on a career-high 39 carries in a 20-10 win at Pittsburgh, which put the Scarlet Knights at 7-0 for the program’s best start in 30 years. Rice had a 63-yard run that pace a 90-yard scoring drive in the fourth quarter, which allowed the Scarlet Knights to put the game away after Pittsburgh had rallied to within 13-10.
Rice has four 200-yard rushing games in 19 career games - including three this season. He has 1,124 rushing yards this season, for an average of 160.6 yards per game, second to Garrett Wolfe of Northern Illinois. Now Rice is chasing the Big East record for rushing yards in a season (1,753 by Miami’s Willis McGahee in 2002).
“I’ve never been around someone who has gotten off to a jump [statistically] like Ray,” Rutgers coach Greg Schiano told the Newark Star-Ledger. “People are gearing up to stop Ray. Certainly, we would. But when you have a real good player like Ray, sometimes even when people are geared up to stop him, he is going to succeed.”
RICE’S MOTIVATION: Rice delighted in telling reporters the number of 200-yard rushing games he had in high school. Zero. “Ironic, isn’t it?” Rice said.
Rice’s motivation now? “I’m doing it for the seniors,” Rice told the Newark Star-Ledger. “These guys have been here a long time, through the trials and tribulations of some tough seasons. I’m getting pushed in the huddle, too. They won’t let me down. When you have teammates doing that, you don’t want to let them down.”
MORE RICE: Rice is 5-foot-9, 195 pounds, but has impressed everyone with his durability. “Look at his thighs and calves,” Leonard told the Newark Star-Ledger. “You see why he’s so strong.” Said Schiano, “He’s doing the things only special backs do.”
HEISMAN TALK: Rutgers will send Ray Rice notebooks to Heisman voters and jump-start the back’s Heisman campaign. “We all know, right or wrong, some of that Heisman consideration is publicity and getting your name out there,” Schiano told the Newark Star-Ledger. “We could have put Ray’s name out there all we wanted. If he didn’t have these numbers, it wouldn’t have mattered. Ray is the one who made this opportunity for himself and we’re trying to assist him.”
OVERLOOKED NUMBERS: With all the talk about Rice’s season, there’s an overlooked aspect of Rutgers’ rise to prominence. Rutgers is No. 2 nationally in total defense, No. 3 in scoring defense and No. 12 in rushing defense.
MILESTONES: Rutgers can win eight games for the first time since 1979 by defeating Connecticut on Sunday night. If Rutgers reached nine wins, that would be only the fifth time it has happened in the 137-year history of the program (the others: 1961, 1975, 1976, 1978).
SWEET SIXTEEN: Rutgers is No. 16 in the AP and coaches’ polls. It has been ranked higher only two other times in school history - No. 15 in the AP poll on Dec. 4, 1961 and No. 15 in the coaches’ poll on Nov. 29, 1976.

WEST VIRGINIA (7-0, 2-0; bye; at Louisville, Thursday, Nov. 2)

The West Virginia Mountaineers, after a 37-11 win at Connecticut, turned their attention to the Thursday night Nov. 2 trip to Louisville, a battle of unbeatens which could decide the Big East championship and maybe a spot in the BCS Championship Game. West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez already is trying to minimize the game’s obvious impact.
“I don’t want our guys to get so uptight and think that the enormity of the game is going to take us away from what we try to do,” Rodriguez told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I’m not going to put all our eggs on the Louisville game. I’m not going to say, ‘This is it.’ I’ve never believed in that. So our preparation for this game will be the same. We got to where we want to be - 7-0 against Louisville.”
Mountaineers guard Jeremy Sheffey was asked about the Louisville game. “I thought we played Cincinnati next,” Sheffey deadpanned.
TYING A MARK: West Virginia is in the top 10 for the 12th consecutive poll, tying a school record set by the 1988 Mountaineers, who lost to Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl that decided a national championship. West Virginia hasn’t lost since Oct. 1, 2005.
IN-VINCE-ABLE: Through seven games, Mountaineers QB Pat White has better rushing numbers (619 yards, nine touchdowns) than Vince Young had at Texas last season.
HERE COMES SLATON: In the fourth quarter against UConn, Mountaineers sophomore RB Steve Slaton had just 14 rushes for 37 yards. Then he gained 91 more yards on just five carries (including a career-long 56-yard TD run), boosting his game total to 128 yards. It was Slaton’s third consecutive 100-yard game - and his sixth in seven games this season. Overall in his 14-game career, Slaton has 11 games with 100 yards or more in rushing.
He’s the fastest Mountaineer player to top 1,000 yards - by one carry. Artie Owens in 1975 reached 1,055 yards and Robert Walker in 1993 reached 1,250 on 152 carries. His seven-game assault on that magic rushing number equaled Amos Zereoue in 1997 and Avon Cobourne in 2002. Each attained the 1,000-yard barrier in the seventh game but required 166 and 185 carries to do it.
WINNING STREAK: The Mountaineers have a 14-game winning streak, the longest in the program’s 118-year history—though still short, semantically speaking, of the 17-0-2 run that was a 19-game unbeaten streak in 1922-23.

PITTSBURGH (6-2, 2-1, bye; at South Florida, Nov. 4)

The Pittsburgh Panthers were run over - literally - by unbeaten Rutgers, 20-10, in a key Big East game. Rutgers had 271 yards rushing and limited Pittsburgh to just 67 yards on the ground, a discouraging statistic for Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, whose mantra has been to fashion a hard-nosed program on both sides of the ball.
“Ray Rice [of Rutgers, who rushed 39 times for 225 yards] is a very talented back, but we’ve been talking all week about the run,” Wannstedt told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I don’t know if we had a no gain, or maybe one or two no gain plays on defense all night. When you can’t control the line of scrimmage on either side, it’s tough to win.”
PALKO UPDATE: Pittsburgh QB Tyler Palko has now throw 108 consecutive pass attempts without an interception. Overall, he was 16 of 29 for 169 yards and one touchdown. “You can’t do anything about it except get back on the horse and come back ready to play,” Palko told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “The season is not over yet. You can’t pout or sit here and put your head in the sand and make excuses for anything. They came out and beat us, but we shot ourselves in the foot.”
MORE STATS: Pittsburgh MLB H.B. Blades had a game-high 19 tackles against Rutgers, giving him 383 for his career, good for fifth place on the Panthers’ all-time chart.

SOUTH FLORIDA (5-3, 1-2; bye; home vs. Pittsburgh, Nov. 4)

The South Florida Bulls put themselves in a precarious position by dropping a 23-6 decision at Cincinnati on a Sunday night. The Bulls (5-3) remain one victory away from bowl eligibility - and it might be a difficult one to achieve. Games remaining: Pittsburgh, Syracuse, at Louisville, at West Virginia.
South Florida’s eight opponents to date have a combined record of 23-35 - and only one, 7-0 Rutgers, has a winning record.
At Cincinnati, South Florida gained only 219 yards - and 61 came during a garbage-time TD drive. The Bulls committed three turnovers, bringing their season total to a Big East-leading 18.

CONNECTICUT (3-4, 0-2; at Rutgers, Sunday night)

The Connecticut Huskies put up little resistence, losing at home to unbeaten West Virginia 37-11. UConn coach Randy Edsall pulled starting QB Matt Bonislawski in the third quarter, replacing him with D.J. Hernandez, a former starter. Edsall wouldn’t immediately say who would be the starter for Sunday night’s trip to Rutgers.
“It might be a situation where we play both guys,” Edsall told the Hartford Courant. “The quarterback has to be able to manage the game, be able to throw the ball effectively, move the team, not turn the ball over.”
HIGH-RANKED VISITORS: When No. 4 West Virginia faced the Huskies, it became the highest ranked college football team in 63 years to play a game in Connecticut. On Oct. 23, 1943, No. 2-ranked Army won at Yale. The last time a top-ranked team played a game in the state? No. 1-ranked Cornell posted a 21-0 win against Yale in 1940.

CINCINNATI (4-4, 1-2; home vs. Syracuse, Saturday)

Cincinnati evened its record with a 23-6 nationally televised victory against the South Florida Bulls. On Sunday night, the Bearcats drew just 15,589 -and one on hand was Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese.
“Three years ago they were giving away tickets at Rutgers,” Tranghese told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “It’s about winning. I’m a big believer that if you win, you get people, especially if you’re in an urban market.”
Cincinnati ranks last in Big East average attendance at 19,694. Rutgers, off to a 7-0 start, averages 39,232 fans.
MEMORIES: Cincinnati’s win against South Florida came on the 85th anniversary of the biggest win in school history - a 115-0 victory against Kentucky Wesleyan in 1921.

SYRACUSE (3-5, 0-3; at Cincinnati, Saturday)

After the Syracuse Orange dropped a 28-13 home decision to unbeaten Louisville, about 90 percent of the Syracuse players sprinted directly into the locker room instead of drifting to midfield for the traditional handshakes and visits with the opposing team.
“They had some mouths on them,” Orange RB Delone Carter told the Syracuse Post-Standard. “They were just talking so much. It’s like, if you’re that good, why do you need to talk so much? It really wasn’t that classy to me. Some people were just disappointed. Some people felt that, too. I shook hands. It’s just the type of person I am.”
COUGHING IT UP: Carter was involved in one of the game’s key sequences. From the Louisville 3-yard line in the second quarter, Carter got the handoff and launched himself upward, trying to leap over the line. He was undercut. His feet went over his head. Louisville punched the ball loose and recovered the fumble.
“The general rule is unless you’re Superman, you don’t need to jump until you’re on the 1-yard line,” Orange offensive coordinator Brian White told the Syracuse Post-Standard. “Delone has got some unique athletic abilities. He thought he could get in. It’s unfortunate for him.”
Carter said he didn’t know how the ball came loose. “I’m in the air, dog. I’m spinning,” Carter said. “I don’t know how it got out. I could’ve made it [into the end zone] if I wasn’t touched. But I was touched.”
Syracuse drove inside the Louisville 10-yard line on its first four possessions, but only came away with a pair of field goals. “We could’ve been down 14-0 or 17-0,” Louisville coach Bobby Petrino said.
0-FOR-THE-BIG-EAST: Syracuse has lost 10 consecutive Big East games, and Coach Greg Robinson still seeks his first league win.