McDonnell Earns 500th Win as Louisville Takes Opener at Clemson

Friday, May 12

Clemson, SC

1:00 PM

University of Louisville

44-6, 21-4

Clemson

37-13, 16-9

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McDonnell Earns 500th Win as Louisville Takes Opener at Clemson

May 12, 2017 | Baseball

Box Score Box Score (PDF)Video: Dan McDonnell's 500th Career Win Video: Dan McDonnell Postgame Video Highlights Video Highlights

Cardinals extend winning streak to 13 games while clinching share of ACC Atlantic title

By: Garett Wall

CLEMSON, S.C. - Louisville's Dan McDonnell registered his 500th career victory as a head coach on Friday as the No. 2 Cardinals opened their top 10 series at No. 7 Clemson with a 4-2 win at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.

The winningest coach in school history with a 500-197 record overall, McDonnell has averaged more than 45 wins per season in his 11 years at Louisville while ranking in the top five nationally among active coaches in winning percentage (.717). The Cardinals (44-6, 21-4 ACC) extended their winning streak to 13 games with Friday's result while also clinching a share of the ACC Atlantic Division championship. Louisville can lock up its third straight outright ACC Atlantic title with one victory in its final five ACC games.

"I always think of (Louisville vice president/director of athletics) Tom Jurich and him giving me a chance to be a head coach and providing the resources needed to have great assistant coaches, but at the end of the day, it's about the players," McDonnell said after Friday's win. "You have to have great players because it's a players' game and these guys make the plays. Any accomplishments I may have as coach gets steered toward the players because those are the guys who are believing what we're teaching, they're working hard, they're having a lot of fun and they're winning a lot of games."

Through his first 10 full seasons, McDonnell guided the Cardinals to three College World Series berths, six NCAA Super Regional appearances, nine NCAA Regional bids, seven regular season conference championships, two conference tournament titles and 29 All-Americans. By clinching at least a share of the 2017 ACC Atlantic title, Louisville has won six consecutive regular season conference championships.

Junior lefthander Brendan McKay gave the Cardinals five scoreless innings ringing up seven strikeouts while scattering five hits and three walks to win his third straight start and move to 8-3 on the season. The Darlington, Pennsylvania native lowered his season ERA to 1.80 and moved into seventh on Louisville's single season strikeout leaderboard with 110 in 80.0 innings. McKay also moved into a tie for second in career wins at Louisville with No. 29 equaling the total achieved by Justin Marks (2007-09).

With the Cardinals clinging to the two-run lead, junior Lincoln Henzman twirled two shutout innings of relief to earn his 15th save of the season. The righthander from Lexington, Kentucky lowered his ERA to 1.20 on the season while opponents are hitting just .141 against him in 30.0 innings of relief work this season.

Drew Ellis paced the offense going 3-for-4 with his team-leading 17th double of the season while raising his batting average to .392 overall. Colby Fitch added a solo home run while also walking and scoring a run, and Josh Stowers chipped in with a single, one walk and one run scored.

Fitch gave the Cardinals a 1-0 lead in the first inning when the junior catcher sent a 2-1 pitch from Charlie Barnes over the right field wall for his ninth home run of the season. Louisville extended the lead to 3-0 in the third inning when a two-out fielding error by Clemson shortstop Logan Davidson on a groundball off the bat of Ellis allowed Taylor and Fitch to score.

The Cardinals pushed their margin to 4-0 in the fourth inning thanks to another unearned run on an error by the Tigers. After singling up the middle and moving to second on a walk to Tyler Fitzgerald, Stowers went to third on a groundball from Taylor before scoring on a throwing error by Davidson.

Clemson cut the margin in half with a pair of two-out runs in the sixth inning. Kyle Wilkie drove in the first run with a RBI single to right field to plate Andrew Cox. Chase Pinder added a RBI single to score Wilkie for the second run of the frame. The Tigers would threaten multiple times down the stretch leaving two runners stranded in the seventh, two more in the eighth and one in the ninth as the Cardinals thwarted each of the Clemson threats.

The Cardinals and Tigers will continue their weekend series on Saturday at 4 p.m., ET, while Sunday's finale is slated for noon on ESPN2.

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