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Freshman lefty Josh Rogers struck out a career-best 10 and senior outfielder Jeff Gardner homered as Louisville clinched an outright AAC regular season title with a 5-1 win over Cincinnati Friday night. The victory also guaranteed that the Cardinals will be the No. 1 seed in next week's AAC Tournament in Clearwater, Fla.
Some postgame notes via U of L:
- Along winning the inaugural American regular season championship, the Cardinals won Big East regular season championships in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013.
- Of those five championships, three of them (2009, 2013 and 2014) have been clinched at home at Jim Patterson Stadium.
- The Cardinals have won nine straight against the Bearcats and 17 of the last 19 overall in the series.
- The Cardinals improved to 37-0 this season when leading after the eighth inning and have won 92 straight games overall when entering the ninth inning with a lead.
- Louisville is 32-0 this season when scoring five or more runs and has won 48 straight games overall when reaching the five-run plateau.
- The Cardinals are 28-4 this season against righty starters.
- Louisville has allowed two or fewer earned runs in 32 of 55 games this season.
- Prior to Friday's outing, Josh Rogers had finished with six strikeouts twice this season - April 8 at Purdue and April 15 against Kentucky.
- The eight innings for Rogers surpassed his previous long outing of seven innings against Western Kentucky on April 22.
- Rogers joins Kyle Funkhouser (May 9 vs. Temple) as the only two pitchers to pitch eight innings this season Louisville.
- With three hits and two RBI on Friday, Jeff Gardner leads the Cardinals with 23 multiple hit games and 20 multiple RBI games this season.
- Gardner moved into a tie for seventh in career doubles at Louisville with Stewart Ijames (2008-12) after connecting for No. 52 on Friday night.
- Finishing with two hits, Cole Sturgeon ranks second on the team with 22 multiple hit games in 2014.
The Cards will wrap up the 2014 regular season by going for a sweep of Cincinnati this afternoon. First pitch inside Jim Patterson is scheduled for 1 p.m.
