Louisville Baseball Entering 2022 Season with Heightened Motivation

Coming off of a year where they missed the NCAA Tournament, the Cardinals are making sure that does not happen again.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The long college baseball offseason is almost over.

One week from today, Louisville will kick off their 2022 campaign down in Tampa, Fla. for a trio of games against Charlotte, South Florida and UConn. A few days later on Tuesday, Feb. 20, the Cardinals will play their home opener against Xavier, which kicks off a stretch of 18 straight games at Jim Patterson Stadium.

And they will have a noticeable edge about them, for good reason. When Selection Sunday for the 2021 NCAA Tournament rolled around, the Louisville found themselves on the outside looking in for the first time since 2011, and only the second time in Dan McDonnell's tenure as the head coach.

For a program like Louisville, who is used to hosting regionals and making trips to the College World Series, McDonnell says they are entering this season "pissed off" because of their performance last year.

"I don't know if there's any better way for the freshmen class to come into this program, with a group of older players, a coaching staff and administration that just wasn't happy about the way it ended," he said at the program's preseason media day. "So everybody's on high alert, and everybody crosses their T's and dots their I's, and you let nothing slide."

In 2021, Louisville ranked as high as the No. 4 team in the nation with four weeks left in regular season. The Cardinals then proceed to go 5-11 for the remainder of the year, including three weekend sweeps in ACC play and a heartbreaking extra innings loss to Georgia Tech in the ACC Tournament that effectively ended their season.

For the players that are returning from last year's squad, they have just as much motivation to return the NCAA Tournament as McDonnell does.

"We set the standard this year, that every single day, we're going to play like it's an elimination game," infielder Ben Metzinger said. "We're a game or two away last year from making the tournament, and then we sat in this room and saw that we didn't make the tournament, and that was really tough on us. We're gonna take winning and losing, losing more importantly, a lot more seriously."

"There's definitely a chip on our shoulder," outfielder Cam Masterman added. "It's a bitter taste in our mouths from last season. It's not something that this program is used to. It's not something I'm used to. We call the season the "revenge tour", that's what we're calling it."

Normally in the weeks leading up to the start of the season, this program is inundated with preseason accolades. Whether is be top 25 rankings, preseason All-ACC selections or All-Americans, Louisville has been no stranger to praise and hype leading up to the season.

Except this preseason, it has been noticeably absent. Louisville is currently unranked in all of the major polls, none of the players earned any preseason honors, and the Cardinals were actually selected to finish fourth in their own division.

Part of this is due to the amount of high-caliber players Louisville saw depart the program over the offseason. The Cardinals saw seven players get selected in the 2021 MLB Draft - including No. 1 overall pick catcher Henry Davis - and an additional seven to graduation and the transfer portal.

That's not to say that the Cardinals are completely devoid of talent. They return guys like Masterman and Metzinger, as well as pitchers Luke Seed, Tate Kuehner and Kaleb Corbett. But they still lost 72.6 percent of their total bases and three of their top five pitchers by innings pitched.

From McDonnell's perspective, that just means more opportunities for others, and more competition. He's specifically excited about the the sophomore and junior classes, as they finally had a regular offseason of development following the onset of COVID-19.

"There's gonna be some new names and new faces that the college baseball world's just not familiar with yet," he said. "But they will be."

(Photo of Dan McDonnell, Louisville Players: Matt Stone - Courier Journal, Courier Journal via Imagn Content Services, LLC)

You can follow Louisville Report for future coverage by liking us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram:

Facebook - @LouisvilleOnSI
Twitter - @LouisvilleOnSI
Instagram - @louisville_report

You can also follow Deputy Editor Matthew McGavic at @Matt_McGavic on Twitter