Louisville baseball sees season end with 11-6 loss to Texas Tech

The Louisville baseball team saw its 2018 season end with an 11-6 loss to Texas Tech Sunday night in Lubbock. The defeat ensured the snapping a consecutive streak of super regional appearances for U of L that dated back to 2013.

Credit the underdogs for slugging out 13 hits and battling back to make it interesting, but a rough outing from starter Reid Detmers put the Cards in a 7-0 hole that was ultimately too deep for them to claw out of.

Louisville got some uncharacteristically shaky starting pitching at the worst possible time, they hit some rockets right at people, but put simply, Texas Tech was the best team in this regional and they played like it. The whole weekend felt a lot like Tucson in 2012, when Arizona rolled a good Cardinal team twice and wound up winning the College World Series.

Despite losing eight players from last year’s College World Series team to the MLB Draft (including two top 50 picks), one of the youngest Louisville teams of the Dan McDonnell era was able to win 45 games this year. Down years for even the strongest of programs in the country typically mean missing the NCAA tournament. For U of L, it meant nearly winning the ACC tournament, flirting with hosting a regional for the sixth straight year, and ultimately being one of the top two seeds in the field. That’s not bad.

Assuming nothing unforeseen occurs in the coming months, Louisville should begin next season as a top 10 squad.