Louisville Defeats Eastern Kentucky, Gets to .500 on Season

W: Carson Liggett (1-1), L: Rese Brown (0-1)

Continuing on their 18-game home stand with a midweek matchup against Eastern Kentucky, the Louisville baseball program used a balanced attack to come out on top, winning 12-3 on Tuesday at Jim Patterson Stadium.

The Cardinals (4-4) are now on a four-game win streak, and get to .500 on the season after dropping their first four games of the season. They also move to 22-2 against the Colonels (1-7) under head coach Dan McDonnell, and 74-49-1 overall.

The top of Louisville's order - Lucas Moore (2-3, 1 BB), J.T. Benson (3-3, HR, 4 RBI, BB) and Brandon Anderson (2-3, 3 RBI, HR, BB) - shined against Eastern Kentucky. Not only did they all have multi-hit days, they had seven of the Cardinals' 11 hits, seven of their 10 RBIs, three of their four walks and both home runs.

Louisville wasted little time jumping on Eastern Kentucky, plating five runs over the first two innings. Anderson got the scoring started with an RBI groundout in the first, which was then followed up by Benson scoring on a wild pitch. The next inning, Alex Alicea (1-3, RBI) hit an RBI single and later scored on a throwing error, then Benson collected a sacrifice fly.

The Cardinals also got a solid start out on the mound from Carson Liggett (6.0 IP, 5 K, 5 H, 3 ER). Making his second start of the early season, he posted his fifth quality start of his career and first since Apr. 23, 2023 at Duke, allowing more than one runner to reach base in an inning just once - coming in the fourth when EKU broke the shutout with a two-run home-run.

In the bottom of the frame, Louisville got those two runs back with a homer of their own when Anderson blasted a 434-foot two-run shot to right-center field. It was the longest home run by a Cardinal since Ryan McCoy hit a 480-foot blast on Apr. 22, 2023 at Duke.

EKU chipped into their deficit in the sixth with a solo homer off of Liggett, but Louisville had an immediate response to that as well. In the bottom of the sixth, Eddie King Jr. (1-4, RBI) got that run back with a bases loaded RBI single.

During the late stages of the game, Louisville made sure from both the plate and the mound that any comeback attempt by EKU would not happen. They put up a quartet on runs in the seventh inning, with McCoy (0-2, RBI, BB) pushing across a run on an RBI groundout, then Benson one-upping Anderson with a 464-foot three-run homer to the left field berm.

After Liggett's day on the mound was done, Louisville got strong work out of their bullpen. All of Riley Phillips' (1.2 IP, 5 K, 2 H) outs came via the strikeout, including the first four batters he faced, then Colton Hartman (1.1 IP, 2 K, 1 H) would post a scoreless relief outing in his collegiate debut.

Next up for Louisville, they'll host a three-game weekend series against Youngstown State. First pitch of game one is slated for Friday, Mar. 1 at 3:00 p.m. EST, and will be televised on ACC Network Extra and broadcast on 970 WGTK.