Virginia Baseball Drops High-Scoring Affair at Louisville 14-10

The Cavaliers have scored 31 runs over the last two days. Yet, they are 1-1 in those games and now have to try to recover to win the series on Sunday. Welcome to the experience of Virginia baseball in 2024.

After getting a nearly perfect all-around performance in Friday night's 21-3 victory over the Cardinals, No. 11 Virginia (27-8, 10-7 ACC) fell behind early and never fully recovered as Louisville (21-12, 7-7 ACC) evened the series with a 14-10 win on Saturday afternoon at Patterson Stadium.

While Evan Blanco gave the Cavaliers a brilliant start on the mound in game 1, Kevin Jaxel couldn't follow that blueprint in game 2, giving up five runs on five hits and an error in the bottom of the first inning. That frame included a three-run home run from Ryan McCoy.

The Cardinals added two more runs in the bottom of the second as McCoy again got good contact on a pitch from Blake Barker and Harrison Didawick was unable to make a tough catch in the left field corner and it fell for a two-run double.

After going relatively quietly in the first two innings, the Cavaliers got on the board in the top of the third as Luke Hanson hit a leadoff double and scored on a Griff O'Ferrall single. Louisville responded with a pair of RBI singles in the bottom of the third, but Virginia's offense broke through for four runs in the top of the fourth. Hanson and Jacob Ference delivered RBI singles, Eric Becker was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, and O'Ferrall brought home another run with a sacrifice fly.

Jay Woolfolk managed to settle things down temporarily for the UVA pitching staff, getting out of Barker's jam in the bottom of the third and then putting a couple of zeroes on the board in the fourth and fifth innings.

Unfortunately for the Cavaliers, the Louisville pitching staff also successfully cooled off the UVA bats, which were held off the scoreboard for the next three innings despite having runners in scoring position in the sixth and seventh.

After Virginia had gotten into striking distance with the four-run fourth to make it 9-5, Louisville tallied three runs in the sixth and two more in the seventh as McCoy hit his second home run of the game, a two-run homer to right field to push the Cardinal lead to 14-5.

Had the deficit been a little bit smaller, UVA's vaunted offense, which came into the weekend ranked fifth in the country in scoring (9.9 runs per game), might have been able to stage yet another epic comeback. But the nine-run gap was too much to overcome.

Eric Becker hit a two-run single in the top of the eighth and Aidan Teel hit a three-run home run to right field in the top of the ninth with two outs. But that was all she wrote, as Virginia's rally fell short and Louisville tied the series up with a 14-10 win.

Jay Woolfolk's outing of just one earned run in 3.1 innings of work was the highlight of an otherwise dismal performance from the UVA pitching staff, which gave up 12 earned runs on 16 hits and issued nine walks.

Virginia got three RBI each from Aidan Teel and Eric Becker and multi-hit games from Griff O'Ferrall and Luke Hanson, but it wasn't enough to keep up with the Louisville offense in game 2.

With the series tied up at one game apiece, Virginia and Louisville will battle to decide the series winner in game 3 on Sunday at 1pm on ACC Network Extra.