The bleeding continues at Louisville

By Darrell Laurant  |   Wednesday, July 02, 2008  |  Comments( 0 )

Louisville Cardinals
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The football talent pool at the University of Louisville grew even more shallow last week. You don't lose a 6-foot-4, 280-pound player without it creating a ripple.

Not that Aundre Henderson had lived up to his promise so far as a Cardinal. Given a four-star ranking by Rivals.com as a senior at Louisville's Manual High School and touted as the No. 2 prospect in the state, Henderson originally committed to Minnesota before deciding to stay close to home. Redshirted as a true freshman, he managed only three tackles last year as a backup defensive tackle.

Nevertheless, the trend has to be unsettling for second-year coach Steve Kragthorpe. The Louisville Courier-Journal recently ran a story pointing out that the Cardinals have lost 20 scholarship underclassmen since the end of spring practice in 2007. Three left early for the NFL, three suffered career-ending injuries and the rest either transferred out, were booted off the team, or simply quit.

This doesn't look good for Kragthorpe, as he admitted in the Courier-Journal story.

"When you go into a program that has been losing and there's attrition, people say, 'That's just a new coach who's changing the way they do things,' " Kragthorpe said. "In my situation, I came into a program that had been winning, so people aren't as apt to see it that way."
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