LOUISVILLE – After last season’s exhaustingly astounding three-overtime game between Louisville and West Virginia ended – four hours and two minutes, 849 yards in total offense and 90 points after it started – the players began counting the days.

When would the Cardinals and Mountaineers get another chance to drain each other of their last ounce of energy, to frazzle the statisticians, to short circuit the scoreboard and to leave their coaches on death’s door.

“Hopefully we don’t go to triple overtime this time,” Cardinals coach Bobby Petrino said. “That would be hard on the heart.” But it would be healthy for a league that has taken its share of abuse. Three years ago the Big East Conference was in turmoil after Virginia Tech and Miami bolted for the ACC. Boston College was soon to follow.

Last night, the eyes of the college football world were focused on the Big East, where two of the league’s three undefeated teams squared off. West Virginia, ranked third by The Post, and ninth-ranked Louisville (7-0, 2-0) braced for another epic with higher stakes than last season: The winner all but controls its destiny of playing for the national title.

Until the Trojans beat the Irish on the final play last season, Louisville-West Virginia was the best regular-season game of 2005. It ended with West Virginia safety Eric Wicks stopping Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm just short of the goal line on a 2-point conversion in the third overtime.

West Virginia, which trailed 17-0, had prevailed 46-44.

“Toward the end of the third quarter we were still down by 10 or something and I looked over into the corner of the stadium and I saw a full moon,” said West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez. “I’m thinking strange things are happening here.”

There wasn’t a full moon over Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium although it looked like one. There was, however, a record crowd, many of whom clad in black T-shirts. Blackout Thursday was the theme.

“We could have sold twice as many seats,” said Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich.

The game has taken on such all-encompassing proportions that it’s hard to name a big game this weekend. Louisville-West Virginia II was the game, white moon, black shirts and all. This was the game. This was a reckoning.

Could the Cardinals do what no team has done before – slow West Virginia’s spread option run attack, which was averaging 319 yards, second best in the nation? Could the Mountaineers slow Louisville, the nation’s best offense?

The answer would come in about four hours.