Louisville baseball offense continues surge in rout of Kentucky

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The pieces are starting to fall into place for Louisville baseball.

After sweeping No. 8 NC State in Raleigh over the weekend, the No. 7 Cardinals pounded their way to an 18-6 win and season sweep of rival Kentucky on Tuesday at Kentucky Proud Park.

Louisville scored in all but the first and ninth innings, plating multiple runs in each of the third through eighth innings. The Cards pounded out 23 hits, most in a single game since April 24, 2005, and scored eight unearned runs thanks to four Kentucky errors.

“We’re playing really good right now,” Louisville coach Dan McDonnell said. “We’ve had good pitching all year – starting pitching, our bullpen has been good – we’ve played really good defense this year, but I think everybody is trying to find that offense. It really locked in last week, had a big weekend and we just kind of kept it going.”

Kentucky jumped out to a 5-1 lead after two innings thanks in large part to home runs from left fielder Ryan Shinn and third baseman Breydon Daniel, but by the next time the Wildcats scored in the bottom of the sixth inning Louisville had pounded out 11 unanswered runs to blow the game open.

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Louisville took the lead with a two-out rally in the top of the fourth inning when center fielder Lucas Dunn’s double scored two runs to tie the game at five before left fielder Jake Snider singled to left field to drive Dunn home for a 6-5 lead.

Cards third baseman Alex Binelas, the reigning ACC Hitter of the Week, was 4-for-5 with one double, two RBIs and four runs scored. Seven different Louisville batters tallied multiple hits in the game. Snider, first baseman Logan Wyatt and second baseman Justin Lavey each tallied three hits.

Kentucky, which swept a doubleheader at No. 17 Ole Miss Sunday for its first series win against a Power 5 conference foe of the season, used 10 pitchers in the game, turning to little-used relievers who struggled to keep the Cardinals’ potent offense at bay.

Louisville entered its weekend series at NC State ranked 181st in the country in batting average (.258) and 109th in runs per game (6.2) but has now scored double-digit runs in four of its last five games.

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“There’s a lot of internal competition on our team, which I think is making our offense really good right now,” McDonnell said. “It’s just hard. If you take off at-bats or you take a day off, somebody will pass you and you might not get that spot back.”

For Kentucky, the blowout loss stalls much of the momentum from the series win at Ole Miss and casts further doubt about whether the roster has enough effective pitching to rally down the stretch for a spot in the 12-team Southeastern Conference Tournament.

“Obviously, you want to play good,” Kentucky coach Nick Mingione said. “We didn’t do enough things good. Obviously, back to practice tomorrow and try to get to work.”

McDonnell went to bat for Mingione and his staff, noting that many college coaches stumble in their second or third seasons leading a program due to heavy turnover as the initial excitement of a rebuild lags.

With Kentucky up 5-1 early Tuesday, Mingione expected the 4,919 fans at Kentucky’s new stadium – most ever at a regular season game in program history – would help spur the game to one of the tight finishes common in recent years of the rivalry.

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Instead, his team left Louisville with even more reason to be excited about its chances to content for a national title.

“The hitters are feeling good about themselves, even when they jumped on us early,” McDonnell said. “You know (Kentucky) is capable of doing that. They’ve got a good lineup. They’re coming off a good weekend, but it was good to see our guys didn’t panic. They just grinded out a lot of good at-bats.”

Jon Hale:jahale@courier-journal.com; Twitter:@JonHale_CJ. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today:www.courier-journal.com/jonh.