The work toward a third consecutive trip to the College World Series officially began Monday for the University of Louisville baseball team.
The Cardinals, coming off back-to-back trips to Omaha, Neb. (home of the CWS), will have six weeks of full-squad practices in preparation for the 2015 season - UofL’s first in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
“We’ve had a couple of weeks of great individual instruction since the start of the semester, so it’ll be fun to get the full squad on the field and start fall ball,” Louisville coach Dan McDonnell said prior to Monday. “We have a lot to accomplish this fall as we work towards our goal of winning a national championship.”
The Cards (50-17 last year, their second straight 50-win campaign) made another quick exit from the CWS in June, losing their first two games for the second straight season to be eliminated from the tournament.
Nineteen letterwinners return for Louisville led by junior right-handed pitcher Kyle Funkhouser, a second-team All-American in 2014 who went 13-3 (establishing a school-record for wins) with a 1.94 earned-run average and 122 strikeouts in 120.1 innings pitched.
The first week of fall practice will conclude with a pair of open scrimmages at 3 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday at Jim Patterson Stadium. The team is tentatively scheduled to host weekend scrimmages, which will include its annual Pizza Bowl series at some point, every week until the conclusion of fall workouts in mid-October. Dates and times will be announced throughout the fall.
Photo courtesy University of Louisville Baseball Facebook Page
