Riley Phillips Shuts Down Wolverines, Offense Erupts for 20 Runs in Win

For the second time on Sunday, Louisville was faced with a win-or-go-home situation and for the second time, they proved to be too much for the opposition. The offense scored 20 runs on their way to a 20-1 victory, while Riley Phillips turned in his most impressive performance as a Card.

Louisville and Michigan will play tomorrow for a berth in the Super Regionals. If the Cards win, they will take on the winner of TCU and Texas A&M. They would host TCU at Jim Patterson Stadium but would have to travel to College Station if Texas A&M were to win the regional.

Phillips struck out 11 batters in five innings, allowing just one run, a solo home run in the bottom of the third inning. His 11 strikeouts were a career high, setting the tone early and often against a dangerous Wolverines offense.

Evan Webster entered in the sixth inning, tossing four shutout frames to end the contest. He picked up four strikeouts on the day.

Michigan Head Coach, Erik Bakich, trotted seven different pitchers out to the mound and nearly all of them exited as quickly as they entered. Of the seven pitchers, six of them gave up multiple runs, including Keaton Carattini who surrendered six runs one inning of work.

Ben Metzinger was not ready for his Louisville career to end today, collecting three hits, two of them were home runs, and five RBI.

Levi Usher, Cameron Masterman, Dalton Rushing, and Isaac Humphrey each chipped in with a multi-hit game as Masterman crushed his third home run of the regional on his way to a 3 RBI game.

Because it is the NCAA, they do not allow trackman during the tournament, so we will never know how far this ball traveled. It was a long, long way.

The bullpen was very excited about the offensive production. Caution, the below video is NSFW.

As I said before the Michigan game today, we are starting to get deep into bullpens at this point. The score tomorrow has the potential to get out of hand as both teams will require many arms to get through nine innings.

I look for Carter Lohman and Alex Galvan to carry some of the workload, but don’t be surprised to see a few of the guys that we’ve already seen this weekend hear their name called. Coach McDonnell will do whatever it takes at this point to win.

The game tomorrow has been moved from 6:00 PM to noon due to impending weather. This is a huge advantage for Michigan as JPS will not be near as packed in the middle of the day. Buy a ticket and bring a friend.