Well its that time of year. In the next two months the preseason polls for college baseball will come out and the cards are looking to find themselves in the top 25 in all of those polls. Being in the top 25 and staying in it all year and then winning the BE and the BET will hopefully be enough for the Cards to host a regional at Jim Patterson Stadium in June. Yes there is a lot of work to be done to get to that point but this is the first step. Here is the press release from Uoflsports.com

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The University of Louisville baseball team earned a No. 20 ranking in the Ping!Baseball 2009 Preseason Top 30 released on Thursday.

The Cardinals - the highest ranked BIG EAST team in the preseason poll - return eight of nine position starters for 2009, including All-American third baseman Chris Dominguez. Third-year head coach Dan McDonnell's squad also returns a deep stable of talented pitchers, led by All-American lefty starter Justin Marks.

Last season, Louisville earned its second consecutive NCAA Championship bid after winning the program's first ever BIG EAST Tournament title. The Cards finished 41-21 overall in 2008 after being eliminated from the Athens Regional by eventual College World Series runner-up Georgia.

Dominguez (Miami, Fla.), who elected to return to Louisville for his junior season despite being drafted in the fifth round of the 2008 MLB Draft by the Colorado Rockies, was named to five All-America teams in 2008 and earned BIG EAST Co-Player of the Year honors after hitting .365 with a team-leading 21 home runs and 75 RBI. Marks (Owensboro, Ky.) was named to a pair of All-America teams and earned All-BIG EAST First Team honors last season with a 9-2 record, a 2.37 ERA and 89 strikeouts in 91 innings of work.

Also representing the BIG EAST Conference in the Ping!Baseball Preseason Poll is Notre Dame at No. 29, while North Carolina checks in at No. 1 overall.

Louisville will open the 2009 season with a three-game series at Southeastern Conference foe Florida, which checked in at No. 24 in the Ping!Baseball Preseason Top 30, on Feb. 20-22 in Gainesville. The Cards' 2009 home-opener is set for Feb. 25 at 2 p.m. ET, against Eastern Kentucky. <!-- STORY AD BEGINS HERE -->