CLEARWATER, FL - The Rutgers baseball team ran into a hot-hitting Louisville squad, ending its BIG EAST Championship run with a 13-3 loss to the Cardinals in the semifinals Friday morning at Bright House Networks Field. The defeat ends the Scarlet Knights' season at 29-28-1.

Louisville (31-28), which has now won 12-straight games, raced out to an 8-0 lead through five innings, collecting 10 hits through the first five frames, ending senior pitcher Jim Jansen's (Hillsdale, NJ) day after two innings. The Cardinals plated four runs in the first and two more each in the second and fifth innings.

Rutgers got on the board in the sixth inning, plating a pair of runs in the frame to cut the Scarlet Knights' deficit to 8-2. Jeff Grose (Iselin, NJ) and Todd Frazier (Toms River, NJ) led off the inning with a pair of singles and Ryan Hill (Hillsdale, NJ) brought home Grose with a sacrifice fly. Following a Dave Williams (Franklin, NJ) walk, Frazier alertly raced around from second to score on a Steve Hook (Langhorne, PA) groundout to the shortstop.

Louisville, however, added five runs in the bottom-half of the sixth, capped by an Isaiah Howes three-run home run. The five-run outburst built the Cardinals' lead to 13-2, ending Rutgers' comeback bid.

The Scarlet Knights scored a run in the ninth on a Frazier RBI single to make it 13-3, but RU, which rebounded from a tournament-opening loss to the Cardinals with two elimination-game wins, finally succumbed to defeat.

The Cardinals collected 16 hits in the game and are hitting nearly .500 as a team for their three tournament games.

Jansen (2-1) took the loss, giving up six runs on seven hits in two innings in his final collegiate game. Senior relievers Joe Baione (Staten Island, NY) and Ryan Bradley (Overland Park, KS) made their final collegiate appearances on Friday as well.

Louisville's Jake Smith (3-3) got the complete-game win, allowing three runs on eight hits with a strikeout.

Grose, a senior, led RU offensively with a 3-for-4 effort in his final collegiate game.

The loss ended the collegiate careers of Rutgers' seven seniors, five of which saw action in Friday's game. The Scarlet Knights battled through an unusual high number of injuries to its pitching staff and a pair of freak prolonged injuries to Williams, one of its top hitters, throughout the season. Despite the set-backs, RU returned to the BIG EAST Championship for the first time in three years, winning two games in the tournament and eliminating second-seeded Connecticut along the way. Rutgers, one of the top hitting teams in the BIG EAST, can look forward to the return of up to six of its eight position players and the addition of talented scholastic and red-shirted pitchers in 2007.