The Louisville Cardinals (11-4, 2-1 ACC) travled to Wake Forest (9-7, 1-2 ACC) this weekend to open ACC play and are coming back home with two victories behind three impressive performances from the weekend rotation. Friday and Saturday's games were both pitchers duels before an exciting Sunday afternoon game that saw 20 combined runs. The Louisville pitching staff was able to keep a Wake offense calm that led the ACC in scoring last year with almost 8 runs a game. The two offenses are polar opposites as the Deacons rely on the long ball and Louisville focuses on getting runners on base any way possible and being aggressive on the base paths
Friday Night
Reid Detmers (3-0) was up to Reid Detmers things, striking out 15 batters in 6 innings, only giving up 4 hits and zero runs as the Cards cruised to a 4-1 victory.
This just isn't fair.
Or this..
Adam Elliott and Michael Kirian (S, 6) closed out the final three frames, Elliott giving up the only run. At the plate, Levi Usher led the Cards with two hits while five other batters added one hit apiece. Justin Lavey, Jared Poland, and Danny Oriente tallied the RBI for the evening. Louisville was very aggressive on the base paths with 4 stolen bases in 5 attempts.
Saturday
The Cards lost a heartbreaker 3-2 on a walk-off home run by William Simoneit in the bottom of the 9th after scoring a run in the top of the inning to tie it. He doesn't seem like someone I would care to have a drink with.
Evan Webster (1-1) got out of a bases load jam in the 8th, but ultimately took the loss. Bobby Miller was impressive again, tossing 6.2 innings, giving up two runs and recording 9 strikeouts. He was a little wild on Saturday, giving up four walks, but kept the Deacs at bay other than that. The offense didn't provide much, with just five hits and two of them from Levi Usher. Oriente and Usher had the two RBI for the Cards. Louisville added four additional stolen bases on Saturday afternoon.
Sunday
Since Dan McDonnell has arrived at Louisville, he has made it clear that he wants to win on Sunday's and he has done just that. Everything was clicking on all cylinders on Sunday as the Cards embarrassed Wake Forest 16-4 to win the series on the road. The starting pitching continued to be dominant as Luke Smith (3-0) picked up the win after going 6.1 innings, giving up 5 H, 1 BB, 3 runs and striking out 5. At the plate, the Cards put on a clinic, recording 18 hits. Levi Usher led the offense again with 3 hits, while Henry Davis, Zach Britton, and Luke Brown added two apiece. Davis and Jared Poland both added home runs this afternoon.
Due to the big lead on Sunday, Coach McDonnell was able to get a lot of other guys involved. These at bats are critical because we may need them to step up in a pinch hitting/defensive substitution role in the future. Lucas Dunn saw some time again this weekend, as well as Andrew Benefield and Cam Masterman.
The Cards defense was also impressive this weekend, with some big time plays coming from many different players. This was a heck of a catch by Levi Usher.
Ben Metzinger continued to flash his glove at third and Justin Lavey made some really nice plays at SS as well. For the series, the Cards only had 1(!!) error. I will take that every single weekend. The biggest concern of the weekend was the fact that Louisville left 20 runners on base. It didn't hurt us this weekend, but against tougher competition, that just won't cut it.
Up Next
Louisville hosts Chicago State on Tuesday at 3:00pm and Wednesday at noon. Both games will be on ACCNX and 1450 AM.
Next weekend Notre Dame travels to Louisville for a three game ACC series. Surprisingly, Notre Dame is 10-2 with a series sweep this weekend at North Carolina. More to come on that series later in the week.
