Baseball tops Pitt behind Brendan McKay’s career day

The Louisville Cardinal By Micah Brown–Baseball (13-0, 1-0) opened up ACC play with a 3-0 victory over Pittsburgh (7-5, 0-1). With the win, Louisville remains one of two undefeated teams in Division I baseball.In a game where offense was at a premium, the Cards were led to victory by junior Brendan McKay. The two-way stud threw a career-high 15 strikeouts while only allowing two hits and one walk. McKay lowered his already-stellar ERA from 0.82 to 0.50.“I had no idea (about the career-high strikes),” McKay said. “You just get in that zone where you’re not worried about anything but just putting up outs for your team.”Offensively, the junior drove in one of Louisville’s three runs with a sacrifice fly in the first inning. Junior Drew Ellis followed suit with an RBI single, driving in sophomore Devin Mann to put the Cards up 2-0 in the opening inning. Ellis then doubled in the third inning, being brought home by a fake-bunt hit by senior Collin Lyman.Pittsburgh’s pitching settled down after the third inning, allowing only two hits and holding the Cards scoreless for the rest of the game.“(They had) really good pitching. This is game one of an ACC and they’re throwing their Friday night guy with a fresh bullpen,” coach Dan McDonnell said. “We left a lot of runners on base but you tip your hat. That’s what good pitchers do.”For the Panthers, offense was hard to come by, as they finished with no runs and only produced a total of two hits. Pittsburgh only had two runners in scoring position for the entire game.Junior Lincoln Henzman relieved McKay and threw two hitless innings with three strikeouts and one walk. Henzman and McKay combined to record 18 of the possible 27 outs via strikeout.Louisville looks to improve their undefeated record as well as take ...


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