Three takeaways from Louisville's heartbreaking loss to Clemson

With its biggest crowd of the season, Louisville football found itself in a battle with Clemson.

The Cardinals, who went without star quarterback Malik Cunningham for two second-half drives, lost to Clemson 30-24. The injury to Cunningham with 4:59 left in the game proved to be the turning point as the Cardinals dropped its second straight game.

Louisville is now 4-5 on the year and 2-4 in the ACC. It will host Syracuse next week for Lamar Jackson's jersey retirement.

Louisville's rushing attack has turned into an elite force

The Cardinals faced two of the top-3 rushing defenses in the ACC the last two weeks and pushed its streak of 200 yards or more to five games.

Louisville ran for 222 yards against a Clemson defense that was giving up just 113 yards entering the game. That was the most yards Clemson has given up this season.

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The rushing attack is turning into the strength of Louisville's offense and was evident on Jalen Mitchell's 26-yard touchdown run in the first quarter. But it was also helped by Cunningham's superb game on the ground. He tallied 133 yards on 20 carries, an average of 6.7 yards. He injured what appeared to be his ankle in the third quarter, but came back in for the fourth quarter.

Louisville's offense struggles to finish drives at times, but its rushing attack, mixed with Cunningham's legs has been terrific.

Trevion Cooley led all running backs with 49 yards, while Mitchell added 38 yards.

Cunningham continues to be the heart and soul of the Cardinals

One of the loudest cheers on Saturday was Cunningham running back to the sideline after going out with an injury.

Louisville's entire offense runs through Cunningham, but more than that he's a leader on and off the field for the entire team. When he went down the offense converted just one first down.

There was an obvious change of production with backup quarterback Evan Conley in, but that's expected for any quarterback change. Still, Cunningham, who totaled 308 yards on Saturday, is everything for Louisville. If it loses him for significant time it won't be good.

Louisville finds another way to lose late

Louisville had control of the ball and Cunningham was putting on a show with 4:59 left in the third quarter and a seven-point lead.

But instead of getting up from a scramble, like he does so often, he stayed down and backup quarterback Evan Conley came in. Louisville never recovered from Cunningham going out and lost to the Tigers.

Louisville has lost five games this season. Four of them came down to the final quarter, and drive. It's the same story every game, but this time it was obvious the loss of Cunningham, even for two drives, was the biggest difference.

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It's easy to say Louisville has to put this behind it before Syracuse next week, because we've been saying it all year, so I won't. Louisville has to find ways to overcome adversity. The defense was exhausted, but had its chances to make plays, for example the dropped interception by Chandler Jones in the second quarter, which was followed by a Clemson touchdown a few plays later.

We know Louisville is capable of winning close games, it did it against Central Florida and Florida State, but it's in a bad streak at the moment. Only a few wins can break it.

Cameron Teague Robinson CTeagueRob@gannett.com; Twitter: @cj_teague;

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville vs. Clemson football: Cards fall in final seconds to Tigers