No. 16 SMU Faces No. 23 Louisville In Massive ACC Showdown
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No. 16 SMU doesn’t get much time to ease into ACC play.
The Mustangs travel to No. 23 Louisville on Saturday for one of the most important conference games of the young season, a matchup featuring two programs that have already established themselves as legitimate ACC title contenders.
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SMU enters 2-0 after beating Florida State 27-24 and rolling past UC Davis 56-10. Quarterback Kevin Jennings has been the engine behind that start, throwing for 767 yards and eight touchdowns through two games while completing 76.9 percent of his passes.
Jennings was nearly flawless against UC Davis, completing 14 of 16 passes for 337 yards and five touchdowns before halftime.
That followed a 430-yard, three-touchdown performance at Florida State.
Louisville presents a much different challenge.
Quarterback Lincoln Kienholz, an Ohio State transfer, has thrown for at least 300 yards in each of his first two games with the Cardinals. He has accounted for seven total touchdowns – four passing and three rushing – without throwing an interception.
Kienholz has also rushed for 111 yards, making him one of Louisville’s most dangerous weapons outside the pocket.
The Cardinals are 1-1, but their loss came in a 41-38 battle against Ole Miss. Louisville answered by hammering Villanova 59-13 and piling up 635 yards of offense.
SMU has had the upper hand in this matchup recently.
The Mustangs beat Louisville 34-27 in 2024 and followed with a dominant 38-6 victory last season. Head coach Rhett Lashlee is 2-0 against Louisville’s Jeff Brohm since SMU joined the ACC, and the Mustangs are now 15-2 in conference play during that stretch.
Brohm isn’t ignoring the history.
“They’ve had our number,” he said this week while discussing SMU.
Saturday could come down to which quarterback handles pressure better.
Jennings enters as the ACC’s active leader in career passing yards with 8,476 and total offense with 9,072 yards. Kienholz, meanwhile, has quickly turned Louisville into one of the league’s most explosive offenses.
Both teams also know the larger stakes.
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Neither SMU nor Louisville is scheduled to face Miami during the regular season, making Saturday’s game especially important in a crowded ACC championship race.
For Jennings and the Mustangs, another road win would reinforce their status as one of the conference’s teams to beat.
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