Dan McDonnell’s goal for University of Louisville baseball is to go far in the College World Series this season but he never expected the journey to be without significant challenge.
Going into the West Virginia series, U of L had dropped three of its last five games on the road. “Playing on the road is especially difficult in baseball,” he said recently. “Every venue presents a different set of obstacles, with sometimes unique playing surfaces and unusual ball park dimensions. Sometimes you just hope to keep your head above water.”
His team did better than that over the weekend, closing out a three-game sweep over the Mountaineers on Sunday with a 10-1 win behind the one-hit pitching of sophomore Gabriel Shaw through seven innings.
Shaw’s six strikeouts are a season-high and just one short of a career high. Seventy-two of his 102 pitches were strikes.
Louisville is currently riding a five-game win streak, returning to Jim Patterson Stadium for a 6 p.m. Wednesday game against a strong Western Kentucky University team and a three-game series with Seton Hall this weekend.