By Derek DeBurger

As the Cards continue to improve before ACC play, they end their week on a 10-game win streak.

The week began with the Morehead State Eagles, a team that can score runs if you’re not careful. The Cards jumped on the Eagles early and often, scoring at least one run in every inning and 11 runs within the first three innings. Carson Liggett recorded the start and Riley Phillips had a great performance for his first win of the season.

Louisville dominated in the 19-5 win.

The start of the weekend series, against the Northwestern Wildcats, was a little rocky. Despite going 0-2 in the fourth, Louisville knocked double-digit runs in their next four innings, and easily cruised to a victory. Sebastian Gongora picked up his second win of the season. Gongora still struggles to look dominant in his mound appearances, especially after giving up all five of the Wildcats’ runs in less than six innings of play.

Louisville saves it, winning 11-5.

After four innings of Saturday’s game, it looked like a pitcher’s duel until the Cards exploded for seven runs in the bottom of the fifth inning and three more in the sixth inning. Louisville’s pitching staff had a great day, holding Northwestern to just two scores. One of Northwestern’s two runs was a homerun, so outside of one pitch, the bullpen put up a very solid performance.

Louisville would win 10-2.

Louisville’s 10-game winning streak—one of the longest in the country to that point—would come to an end on Sunday. Louisville’s pitchers got off to the first bad start of the week, giving up five runs in the first four innings. Parker Detmers gave up three runs before getting pulled in the second inning. The Cards were able to shore up their bullpen in the latter innings, but the bats never woke up with virtually every batter having a poor outing. Unfortunately, they dropped the final game 3-6.

Louisville won the series, however, 2-1.

While the competition has not been the most fierce, Louisville has retaken ahold of their season. The Cards are averaging 10.7 runs per game with a batting average of .344, both top 10 ranks nationally. They have also improved in the bullpen, not letting games get out of hand. Even Sunday’s game, with worse pitching than we’ve seen in the past few weeks, was still a maintainable deficit. Louisville looks to still have some work to do in solidifying the Sunday starter, but the relief has looked much better at the perfect time.

This week, Louisville will have a rare weekday series against the Lipscomb Bisons before starting ACC play against the Virginia Tech Hokies. The Hokies look to be a good team, coming off a sweep against Notre Dame to start their ACC schedule.

We’ll find out a lot about the Cards this coming week, but for now, they advance to 10-5 on the season.

Photo Courtesy // Caleb Jones, U of L Athletics