Louisville Baseball Fall Notebook: Pizza Bowl Week
October 14, 2014 | Baseball
Junior Kyle Funkhouser will see his first action of the fall in Saturday's Pizza Bowl finale.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Louisville baseball team will complete its sixth and final week of fall practice with the ninth annual Pizza Bowl series on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at Jim Patterson Stadium. Admission is free for all three games in the series.
First pitch for Wednesday's opener in the best-of-three Pizza Bowl series is set for 3:30 p.m., ET, while Friday's second game is also slated to begin at 3:30 p.m. Saturday's Pizza Bowl finale is scheduled for an 11 a.m., ET first pitch and will precede the Louisville football team's Homecoming matchup against NC State next door to the ballpark at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium.
PIZZA BOWL ROSTERS
The two teams in this year's Pizza Bowl series will be guided by assistant coach Adam Vrable and former Louisville pitcher Dean Kiekhefer, a student assistant this fall and a pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. This year's Pizza Bowl will also feature some former Louisville players as assistant coaches for each team. Assisting with the Krush will be Joe Filomeno and Ty Young, while Jared Ruxer and Coco Johnson will be assistants with the Victors.
Vrable's Victors will include position players Drew Ellis, Jimmy Faul, Riley Jackson, Colin Lyman, Danny Rosenbaum, Will Smith, Nick Solak, Jordan Striegel, Mike White and Sutton Whiting, as well as pitchers Butch Baird, Zack Burdi, Chandler Dale, Drew Harrington, Lincoln Henzman, Anthony Kidston, Kade McClure, Jonah Philley, Alex Sears and Grant Weinmann. The Kiekhefer Krush will include position players Michael Bollmer, Austin Clemons, Colby Fitch, Devin Hairston, Zach Lucas, Corey Ray, Grant Schreiver, Ryan Summers, Logan Taylor and Blake Tiberi and pitchers Brandon Alphin, Chris Elbrecht, Kyle Funkhouser, Sean Leland, Brendan McKay (also hitting), Josh Rogers, Dylan Shoffner, Jake Sparger, Robert Strader and Mac Welsh.
The scheduled starting pitchers for the series include Rogers against Harrington in Wednesday's opener, McKay against Henzman in game two and Funkhouser against Kidston in the finale. Saturday will be the only scrimmage outing of the fall for Funkhouser, who has limited his innings since finishing a busy spring and summer pitching for the Cardinals' CWS club as well as the USA Collegiate National Team.
ABOUT THE PIZZA BOWL
Upon his hiring as Louisville head coach in the summer of 2006, Dan McDonnell immediately created an atmosphere of competition throughout the Cardinal baseball program. Whether it's through conditioning in the Omaha Challenge, or in preseason scrimmages, McDonnell believes in creating competitive situations to give his players numerous opportunities to prepare for what they will see during conference and postseason games.
One of the most effective ways McDonnell and his coaching staff can provide the Louisville players with those competitive, game-like situations is through the annual Pizza Bowl series. Following six weeks of fall practice sessions, the Cardinals take to the field for what started as a one-game scrimmage in the fall of 2006 and has become an ultra-competitive three-game or five-game intra-squad series. The winning team is rewarded by being served as much pizza as it would like by the losing squad, which in turn shares what is left. The Pizza Bowl series has become an exciting and highly anticipated ending to the fall for Louisville coaches, players and fans.
WEEK FIVE SCRIMMAGE HIGHLIGHTS
In last Wednesday's scrimmage, the Red team scored four runs in the ninth inning for an 8-7 win over the Black squad. Freshman Austin Clemons had a three-run double to tie it before freshman Riley Jackson's RBI sac fly pushed the Red team ahead for good. For the Black team, freshman Colby Fitch was 3-for-3 with a two-run homer, a double and three runs scored, while the home run was his second of the fall.
On Thursday, the Black team scored three runs in the first inning on its way to a 7-2 win over the Red squad. Senior Mike White was 2-for-5 with a home run and a double, sophomore Corey Ray was 2-for-4 with a triple and one RBI and freshman Drew Ellis was 3-for-3 with two RBI in the win. Lefty Drew Harrington had three strikeouts in three shutout innings for the win, while lefty Robert Strader threw two scoreless innings of relief with two strikeouts for the Red.
FALL SCRIMMAGE STATS
After nine fall scrimmages, Fitch has paced the way at the plate hitting .600 (15-for-25) with two home runs, three doubles, two triples and seven RBI. Junior Danny Rosenbaum has continued to reach base hitting .448 with (13-of-29) with two doubles and four runs driven in.
Sophomore Will Smith has driven in nine runs in the nine games while hitting .357 (10-for-28) with two doubles and two triples. Freshman Brendan McKay has a .409 average (9-for-22) with five RBI, while Ray is hitting .371 (13-for-35) with a home run, two doubles, one triple and four RBI. Senior Zach Lucas has chipped in with seven RBI while hitting .310 (9-for-29).
ABOUT LOUISVILLE BASEBALL
Louisville returns 19 letterwinners from its 2014 squad, which finished 50-17 overall, won the program's fifth regular season conference championship in six seasons and hosted NCAA postseason games for the second straight year. The Cardinals defeated Kennesaw State in the Louisville Super Regional to clinch their third CWS berth in eight seasons under the guidance of head coach Dan McDonnell. Louisville, which has hosted six different rounds of NCAA postseason baseball in the last eight years, ended the season ranked as highly as sixth in the national polls.
Leading the list of returnees for Louisville in the 2015 season is junior righthanded pitcher Kyle Funkhouser, a Second Team All-American in 2014 who set a school record for wins finishing 13-3 overall with a 1.94 ERA and 122 strikeouts in 120.1 innings. The Cardinals also return senior infielder and 2014 All-Conference honoree Zach Lucas, talented starting pitchers Anthony Kidston (junior righty) and Josh Rogers (sophomore lefty).
In his eight seasons guiding the Louisville baseball program, McDonnell has placed the Cardinals among the nation's elite with the three College World Series berths, four NCAA Super Regional appearances, seven NCAA Regional bids, five conference regular season titles, two conference tournament titles, 14 All-Americans and 359 wins overall (seventh most nationally during that eight-year span).
FOLLOWING THE CARDINALS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
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