Louisville defeated No. 18 Ole Miss 7-2 on Friday in Oxford, Miss.
OXFORD, Miss. – The top-ranked University of Louisville baseball program opened up the 2020 season with a 7-2 victory over No. 18 Ole Miss on Friday night at Swayze Field.
Reid Detmers (1-0) allowed one run over five innings of work, striking out nine for his first victory. Adam Elliott held the Rebels at bay for 2.1 innings and Michael Kirian slammed the door shut with the final five outs for the save.
Both sides squandered scoring opportunities in the first inning before the two starting pitchers settled in. The Cardinals got the first two runners of the night on, but stranded the bases loaded. Ole Miss followed with a pair of runners in scoring position before Detmers struck out three in a row to escape the jam.
Detmers found his groove and struck out the side in order in the second and punched out the leadoff hitter of the third as part of a streak of seven consecutive strikeouts. Meanwhile, Louisville’s offense was kept quiet as well, notching just one hit through the first five innings.
Ole Miss finally broke the scoreless tie in the bottom of the fifth, cashing in a leadoff double with a two-out RBI single to take a 1-0 lead.
The Cardinals answered back in a big way. Luke Brown led off the sixth with an opposite field single and Danny Oriente followed with one of his own. A wild pitch moved the two into scoring position and Zach Britton flipped the game upside down with a two-run double into the left-centerfield gap.
Henry Davis backed it up with a run-scoring double just inside the left field line to extend the lead and Justin Lavey hit a ground-rule double to trade places with Davis and stretch the margin to 4-1.
The Rebels got a run back in the eighth, but the Cardinals responded with three more in the top of the ninth to put the game out of reach. Jared Poland and Alex Binelas each had run-scoring singles and a miscue in the outfield allowed another run to score.
Brown, Davis, Lavey and Poland each had multiple hits, as eight of the nine Louisville starters picked up a knock.
The Cardinals and Rebels will continue the series on Saturday, with first pitch scheduled for 2:30 p.m., ET.