Cards Punch Ticket to Regional Final with Win Over Vanderbilt

Mark BlankenbakerJune 1, 2025

The University of Louisville baseball team punched its ticket into the regional final on Saturday night with a 3-2 victory at No. 1 overall seed Vanderbilt.

Louisville (37-21) moves into Sunday night’s 9 p.m. ET final where it will take on the winner of Vanderbilt and Wright State, which play at 3 p.m. ET.

Matt Klein went the opposite way for a solo home run in the opening inning to get the Cardinals started off on the right foot Saturday evening. It was the second consecutive game with a homer for the junior catcher, who had missed the previous two months with an injury.

Tucker Biven stranded a runner on third in the bottom half of the first and pitched a perfect second before running into a little trouble in the third.

The right-hander issued a one-out walk before a wild pitch pushed the runner up to second. Another wild pitch got away from the plate and with the Cards unable to find the baseball, the runner raced all the way home from second to tie the game at one.

Biven settled down though, retiring the next five batters to keep the game tied through four innings.

Zion Rose gave the Cardinals the lead back leading off the fifth inning with a home run into the left-centerfield seats. Tague Davis followed with a double before moving to third on a sacrifice bunt.

After a strikeout for the second out, Lucas Moore hit a hard groundball into the hole at shortstop and the throw was wide of the bag at first allowing Davis to plate Louisville’s third run.

The Louisville defense gave one of the runs back in the bottom half of the fifth, as an error on the infield with two outs allowed a run to score and chased Biven from the game. Justin West came on with two runners in scoring position and got a groundout to keep the Cardinals in front.

Louisville left the bases loaded in the top of the sixth and Vanderbilt (43-17) immediately threated in the bottom half. Back-to-back singles and an error put runners on second and third with nobody out.

West got the first out on a liner to third and then notched a strikeout and flyout to put an end to the threat and keep it a 3-2 contest.

West worked a perfect seventh and Wyatt Danilowicz followed with a 1-2-3 eighth to send the game to the ninth.

The Cardinals got a two-out hit but nothing else in their half of the ninth before handing the ball off to Jake Schweitzer to try and close out the game.

The freshman hit the leadoff man to start his outing, putting the tying run on base. However, Schweitzer got back-to-back strikeouts to pull the Cardinals within an out of the victory.

Vanderbilt tallied a two-out single into right that moved the tying run up to third base, but the next batter grounded out to shortstop to give the Cards the win.

Biven took a no-decision after allowing just two runs, one earned, on two hits over 4.2 innings. West, Danilowicz and Schweitzer combined for 4.1 scoreless innings of relief work with Schweitzer earning his third save of the year.

Rose and Alicea had the only multi-hit games of the night for the Cardinals, who had eight hits in the win.