Louisville baseball drops 2 of 3 at Florida State, prepares for Rivalry Week

The Louisville baseball team lost its third series of the season over the weekend when fifth-ranked Florida State was able to take two out of three from the visiting Cardinals.

Sunday's rubber match may have been the most disheartening defeat of the season for U of L thus far. After a return to form last Monday against Virginia Tech, senior Kyle Funkhouser once again struggled on the mound, allowing eight runs on six hits over just 3.1 innings. Cardinal pitchers wound up surrendering 16 runs to Florida State, the highest total allowed by Louisville since a 16-3 defeat at the hands of eventual national champion Arizona in the 2012 NCAA Tournament.

"Losing is part of this game but you don't like it when you don't play well and we obviously didn't play well today. You have to learn from it and get ready to play good baseball on Tuesday night and that's all we can do. You can't make excuses, you can't blame people and we can't feel sorry for ourselves," said Louisville head coach Dan McDonnell. "Hopefully, that's the last time it happens to us this season but if you play this game long enough, these kinds of days will happen to you. The good news is we play five games this week with four of them at home and one against our rival, so there's no time to hang our heads. We have a big week ahead of us."

Two of those five games will come in the next three days against a pair of in-state rivals.

First up is Western Kentucky on Tuesday night. The Cards will be looking to sweep the season series with the 'Toppers after throttling them 17-0 in Bowling Green last month. Louisville then heads to Lexington on Wednesday night for the first of two meetings with arch-rival Kentucky. The second installment of the Battle of the Bluegrass will take place next Tuesday, April 19 at Jim Patterson Stadium.