By Will Vandervort.

There is a reason why coaches burn the midnight oil during football season – to discover things like Brent Venables did earlier this week.

While going back and watching Bobby Petrino’s Western Kentucky team from last year, he noticed a play Petrino likes to run when he needs a big play, especially in goal line or short yardage situations. As it turned out, the play he picked up on was the final one Louisville ran in No. 25 Clemson’s 23-17 victory Saturday in Death Valley.

“We watched it on Thursday and we ran it in Thursday’s practice,” Venables said. “They actually covered it on the redo. We redid it. Then we watched it again after practice.”

And practice makes perfect. At least in this case it does.

“We told everybody. ‘They are going to run that play when they have to make a play Saturday night. Mark it down,’” Venables said. “It is going to be a tough game and when they have to have a play they will call it. We said, ‘They are going to run sprint. They are going to run a sprint to the boundary. Here is our call.’”

The play is a run-option pass to the right, except Petrino changes it up a little from the normal run-sprint-action that is normally called. The key player in the formation is wide receiver Eli Rogers who lined up to the right of quarterback Will Gardner in the slot. After the ball was snapped, Rogers ran a dig and then broke out to the right.

“Here is what we have been talking about and sure enough they did it,” Venables said. “It doesn’t happen all the time or very much, but hopefully that lends credibility to do all you can and continue to prepare all the way to the last minute because you never know what is going to make the difference and tonight it did.”

What Louisville (5-2, 3-2 ACC) did not expect was to see Korrin Wiggins and Jayron Kearse bracketing over the top of Rogers.

“When they lined up tonight in it, I was like, I know it is coming. I know it is coming,” Kearse said. “(Venables) put us in the best call possible. It was (déjà vu). I felt like I had already seen that play before.”

It caught Rogers and Gardner off guard and when Rogers made his move, he rushed it and fell to the ground. It knocked the timing of the play off and when Rogers tried to pop back up, Gardner tried to fire the ball into the small window, but defensive tackle DeShawn Watson swatted the pass away to seal the Clemson win.

“Oh my God! It was so crazy because we worked on that play on Thursday,” Kearse said. “Coach V said this is a play that they will go to in crunch time and actually against Arkansas State, when (Petrino) was at Western Kentucky, we watched them against Arkansas State when there was 15 seconds left. They ran that play on third down and they lined up in that same formation.”

It was a fitting end to a day when the defense did everything it could to make sure the Tigers left Death Valley with a victory.

In all, Clemson (4-2, 3-1) shut the Cardinals down on fourth-and-one, third-and-one and every short-yardage situation they faced. The defense also forced two turnovers, scored for a fourth straight home game and held the Cardinals to 1 of 17 on third down.

Louisville finished the game with 266 total yards and just 54 yards rushing.

They were all big plays, but none of them were bigger than the last one.

“There were a lot of plays that made the difference, but that was a huge play obviously,” Venables said.

And it won them the game.