Bowling Green Baseball will head back on the road this weekend for a three-game series against the Louisville Cardinals.

The Cardinals are ranked #5 in the nation.

The Falcons (1-2) are coming off a series loss to the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles on the road.

BGSU dropped Friday’s contest 1-0, despite a great effort from Gage Schenk.

Then. they dropped Saturday’s contest 11-9 in a wild back-and-forth affair.

Finally, they got their first win on Sunday by a score of 10-4.

Louisville has started their season red-hot, picking up a three-game sweep over Bucknell over the past weekend, and then defeating Xavier 12-8 on Wednesday night.

The Cardinals, fresh off an appearance in the NCAA Super Regionals in 2022, have yet to have a game decided by even a single run.

So, it’s two teams on the opposite spectrum.

One, Louisville, with extremely high expectations of trying to make another deep postseason run.

The other, Bowling Green, is just looking to break through, and find their footing in the early season.

Could Bowling Green find a way to stun the Cardinals?

The short answer is Bowling Green will have to play at its best – and that is certainly possible.

Looking back to the win on Sunday, BGSU did what it does best, hitting the ball into the gap and being aggressive on the bases.

The Falcons hit four doubles and stole four bases, something they were good at a year ago.

This was flanked by the “move runners over strategy” Head Coach Kyle Hallock likes to utilize, and Bowling Green had three sacrifice hits in the game.

The pitching will also need to be up to the task.

Schenk as well as reliever Luke Krouse did a great job on Friday, as well as Connar Penrod on Sunday, but there was some inconsistency the rest of the weekend from the staff.

Schenk is likely to get the ball again on Friday, against a lineup that is currently top-15 nationally in batting average.

He will also have to be ready to go against Christian Knapczyk, a potential MLB draft pick.

When talking about the Cardinals, you have to talk about their lineup, which as stated before, is one of the best in the country.

Eddie King Jr. (.636 avg, four RBI) and Ryan McCoy (.500 avg, two home runs) help out Knapczyk and the rest of this lineup.

They have scored under seven runs just once, and most recently scored 12 runs against Xavier.

Their rotation is something to fear as well, with senior Ryan Hanks going 6.1 innings and yielding just one run in his first start.

Sophomore Carson Liggett is also a dangerous asset, who went five innings of two-run ball in his first start.

Bowling Green could use another good weekend for Utility Leighton Banjoff, who had five hits and two doubles in the TTU series as well as Kyle Gurney, who had a pair of doubles and three RBI during opening weekend.

The schedule for the series against the nationally-ranked Cardinals will start with a game on Friday, February 24 at 3:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday’s games are slated to start at 1:00 p.m.

You can watch all the action on ACC Network Extra.