Cote: Miami’s Cardiac Canes win another wild one, 52-45 at Louisville; No. 6 UM now 7-0 | Opinion

Miami Hurricanes fans and their cardiologists undoubtedly were hoping for a stress-free game for a change Saturday afternoon in Louisville -- or at least a finish that wasn’t frantic.

They didn’t get it.

After a 39-38 win at Cal that relied on a miracle comeback followed a 38-34 escape vs. Virginia Tech that required a last-second overturned touchdown, Saturday delivered the typical chaos and bedlam with a 38-38 game in the fourth quarter.

Same story when it ended, though:

The Cardiac Canes are still unbeaten, still thinking ACC Championship Game, and still dreaming College Football Playoff.

Close counts, and so Saturday’s eventual 52-45 UM victory left the No. 6-ranked Hurricanes a tested but unblemished 7-0.

Quarterback Cam Ward passed for 319 yards and four TDs to lead the UM win, becoming the first Canes QB ever to surpass 300 yards and three TDs in the fiirst seven games of a season. The Heisman Trophy may be his to lose. Saturday only increased his chances.

The Cardinals apparently scored a long fumble-return touchdown that would have tied the game 45-45, but a review reversed the call and erased the TD, ruling that quarterback Cam Ward’s fumble was in fact a forward pass that fell incomplete.

It was the right call.

Soon after the Canes’ Damien Martinez uncorked a 30-yard scoring run for the final score.

It was a huge Miami victory that followed the bye. UM had been 0-2 after byes under coach Mario Cristobal and on a 3-11 skid overall following byes. under byes And the reversal of that trend was well-timed, indeed.

“This is a really big one,” Cristobal had admitted before the game.

Louisville entered 4-2 and recently ranked. It was a signature win for the UM program and for Cristobal by my reckoning -- because of how everything would have changed had the Canes lost.

A loss and Miami’s reaching the ACC title game would have been much less certain. And it wold have left UM as a one-loss team being in much more precarious shape on making the 12-team CFP at all.

Miami may well need to finish 12-0 in the regular season, with no wins over ranked opponents on its 2024 ledger. And Saturday at Louisville seemed the most difficult hurdle left om the schedule.

Plenty of drama ahead, though, with a ;prime-time game vs. Florida State next and then a visit by Duke. FSU is living a nightmare season at 1-6 but will be pumped to spoil the season of its great rival. Duke is 6-1 and coached by former Canes coach Manny Diaz, who’s also love to derail the school that fired him.

Saturday was a typical game in many ways for Miami: Imperfect even as the perfection continued.

In the second-half alone Miami gave up a 100-yard kickoff return touchdown, loss a fumble that Louisville turned into another TD, and allowed a successful fake punt that led to the score that made it 38-38.

But Ajay Allen’s 2-yard TD run and then Martinez ‘s long scoring gallop were the difference. The latter proved the winning points as Louisville scored with 54 seconds left.

The Canes led by 24-17 at the half.

Up an early field goal, Miami trailed 7-3 on a 43-yard scoring run by Louisville’s Isaac Brown -- UM’s proneness to allowing big plays continuing.

Canes countered with a gorgeous 27-yard scoring strike from Ward to Jacolby George in the upper left corner of the end zone for a 10-7 lead that grew to 17-7 on Ward’s 49-yard pass play to Sam Brown Jr., another of Miami’s transfer portal prizes.

After the Cardinals closed within 17-14 on a 3-yard scoring run, Miami cashed a huge defensive TD on a Louisville fumble into the end zone from its own 3, caused by Miami’s Simeon Barrow and recovered by Raul Aguirre Jr. It was UM ‘s first defensive fumble recovery of the season, and a giant one to make it 24-14 before the Cards chipped in a 22-yard field goal as the half ended.

The second half got crazy, as by now you might expect.

Oh, by the way: With the win Miami reclaimed Howard Schnellenberger Trophy, named for the late great coach who meant so much to both UM and Louisville.

That was nice.

But the Hurricanes gave bigger prizes in mind, namely the ACC title game and the CFP -- and wherever that might lead.

Saturday’s victory kept both prizes in sight.