Louisville has won two games in a row for the first time all season thanks to a dominant defensive effort.

Here are the takeaways from Louisville's 24-10 win over Pittsburgh:

Louisville's defense came up huge last night, and one of the keys to that defensive performance was taking the ball away. Louisville forced four fumbles, recovered two of those, and added two interceptions. That's a total of four takeaways for Bryan Brown's unit, and on the season, Louisville is eighth in the country in forcing turnovers. When you win the turnover battle as lopsided as Louisville did in this one, you give yourself a great chance to win. Yasir Abdullah was a big part of the this, forcing a fumble and picking off a pass. Louisville won the turnover battle 4-1.

In addition to winning the turnover battle, Scott Satterfield mentioned explosive plays as something that Louisville needed to come up with on offense, and limit on defense. Louisville edged out Pittsburgh 10-8 in explosive plays. Pitt had three explosive plays in the passing game, one for 18 yards, one for 37 yards, and one for 19 yards. On the ground Pitt had five explosive plays with carries of 10, 15, 12, 29, and 36.

For Louisville, in the air, the Cardinals had gains of 29, 25, 15, 33, and 28. In the running game, Louisville had five explosives: 14 yards, 30 yards, 15 yards, 12 yards, and 26 yards. Louisville did what they needed to do, winning the explosive-play margin.

For a second-straight game, with Tiyon Evans sidelined, Trevion Cooley was the workhorse out of the backfield, and he answered the call. Cooley carried the ball 11 times for 75 yards, averaging nearly seven yards per attempt. In Louisville's last game against Virginia, Cooley was just as efficient. Over those two games, Cooley has rushed 29 times for 152 yards, averaging over five yards per carry. Even when Evans returns, it will be hard to keep Cooley out of the game.

The win over Pitt sets up a monster game at Cardinal Stadium on Saturday as a top-15 team in Wake Forest will be coming to Louisville. This is the moment. This is the opportunity for a signature win.