Tom Jurich walked into his suite, took a seat and canvassed the scene in front of him.

Louisville had already played out the league portion of its inaugural ACC campaign. The Cardinals were about to complete their final assignment of the arrangement, in their first-ever trip to Notre Dame. The chunks of red throughout the stadium only provided further reinforcement that the newcomers were, in fact, home in their new league.

It does not get much better for Louisville than a 9-3 overall record and 5-3 mark in Year 1 of ACC play. Not when it has a first-year head coach on the rebound. Not when it has been plagued by injuries that very easily could have seen that mark swing by a game or two.

"It's been a great conference, it's exceeded all of our expectations," said Jurich, Louisville's athletic director. "It's an incredibly well-run conference. But I think the competition has made us play better, there's no question about it. I think every week, whether you're playing a team at the top or the bottom, they all come to play. That's something that's really special. I think we're built for success.

Bobby Petrino and the Cardinals finished their first season in the ACC with a 9-3 overall record. AP Photo/Stephan Savoia

"I'm not saying we're going to run away with the league, by no means. But I think we've got to put away a good foundation, I think [Bobby Petrino's] come back and just done a hell of a job. I couldn't be more impressed with the job he's done. He's had a lot of tough things go against him, and they're just little speed bumps to him."

Petrino, Jurich said, has been among the biggest revelations. The former Louisville coach returned to town with plenty of well-documented baggage after Charlie Strong's departure for Texas, looking to hold the ship together as the program took a step up into another conference.

Jurich admitted his biggest initial worry was what the locker room's response would be after watching the beloved Strong leave. He insists now that he has never seen players take to a new coach the way this group has to Petrino.

"He had ultimate respect from Day 1," Jurich said. "He's a business-like coach, but he also really cares about these kids a lot, and they know it's genuine. Bobby's not a good actor, and I think they really saw that. From Day 1, it's been amazing. To put my finger on, I can't put my finger on it. It's incredible. He owns that locker room."

"He's learned through adversity, he's had a lot of success, he's learned with success," Jurich later added. "But I think the thing that he's done better than anything, he's really matured. He's really matured into a phenomenal head coach. And I think before when he was here — no fault of his own, no fault of his own — everybody in the world was after him, wanted him. And I think it was always that next carrot, that next carrot. At a young age, he's offered all those big jobs, offered the Oakland Raiders, I saw the contract. He had everything. But I think now he really wants to settle down, and he's building the program. He's really focused on the program. And that's all I've asked him to do. Build a program, the team will come. And he's doing that."

Replacing a first-round draft pick at quarterback (Teddy Bridgewater) with what ended up being three different contributors was one hurdle. Doing it for much of the season without likely first-round pick DeVante Parker was a different challenge, as the receiver missed the first seven games (and still earned third-team All-ACC recognition.)

The three losses? Heartbreakers to Virginia and Clemson without Parker, and a loss to defending champion Florida State that the Cards are still smarting from.

Their biggest wins came in the past two weeks, winning at Notre Dame Stadium with a heavy number of traveling fans on hand in South Bend, and by beating rival Kentucky in a back-and-forth affair Saturday to end the season.

Both, naturally, were led by a pair of newcomer quarterbacks, freshman Reggie Bonnafon and redshirt freshman Kyle Bolin. They boasted a top-10 defense under new coordinator Todd Grantham, led by a safety, Gerod Holliman, who has matched the FBS record for interceptions (14) this season.

"I thought we had some great battles," Petrino said. "It's a very competitive conference, kind of what we told our players going in: Everybody is going to have good players, everyone is going to be very well-coached. It's going to come down to the fourth quarter. We won some in the fourth quarter. Unfortunately we dropped a couple, too.

"It was exciting for us. I think it gives us a great gauge in what we need to do in recruiting."

That is the next building block, as Louisville remains on the outside looking in at ESPN's top 40 recruiting classes for Petrino's first full cycle.

Still, that remains within grasp for a program on the rise, one led by an AD whose biggest gamble — notifying the old Big East of Louisville's exit, 13 months before receiving an ACC invite — is playing out in the fashion he had envisioned for some time.

"The other side of it was the tough thing to look at," Jurich said of the risk involved. "We had done so much. And we didn't do it just in football. We did it across the board in every sport. We did it in our facilities, our community, our university. Everybody made the commitment to do it, and to be on the outside looking in was very, very difficult to do, because now the gap, there's a gap there, and that's a tough gap. And I've been on the other side of that gap. So I certainly feel for those people.

"But it was something that we had to do and we were very persistent, but I think the thing that essentially got us in the ACC is I think we did everything right. We always tried to do it with class and integrity and do it right."