After the lopsided competition between Louisville and Alabama A&M baseball teams last weekend there was a plethora of consternation among Card fans and probably some complaining within the A&M following.

The question was “Why would UofL play a team that was unable to compete with the Cards at this point in the season”? A legitimate question that has a simple answer, the baseball team had an open weekend and Alabama A&M was the best that the Cards could do to not have a void in the schedule. The philosophy of Coach Mac is to not allow his team to get rusty this late in the season.

Regardless of how tough the competition a team still has to follow the same regimen to prepare and play the games. They also have batting and fielding practice in game conditions. The subs get some valuable game experience and also a chance to perform in front of the home crowd. Anything is better than sitting on the bench.

Mid-season open dates are a practice of the ACC unlike most conferences that play each other every weekend. Each ACC team has an open weekend after the conference schedule begins. Some chose to use that weekend to rest but most schedule an opponent to come to their place to play.

Since there are no college baseball independents every college team is required to play a conference opponent almost every weekend. Therefore it is very difficult to find a willing opponent to play a weekend series against a vastly superior foe. Every ACC baseball team has to find a solution to one open weekend a season.

UNC, VT, WF, Virginia, and BC have an open date meaning they have no games for an entire weekend. FSU plays Richmond, GT-Western Carolina, Notre Dame-Canisius, Pitt-Presbyterian, Miami-Bethune Cookman, Clemson-VMI, NCSU-Radford, Duke-Virginia Commonwealth and Louisville-Alabama A&M.

Louisville is not the only team that receives the ire of their fans for a less-than-entertaining weekend.