BATON ROUGE — The LSU Tigers advance to the NCAA Super Regional for the second straight year with a 5-3 win over the University of Louisiana at Monroe on Sunday afternoon.
In contrast to the first two sub-regional games this weekend, the Tigers were restricted to only nine hits and relied on solid pitching performances from Hunter Gomez, Shane Youman, and Weylin Guidry. Gomez pitched 5 1/3 innings giving up only five hits and three earned runs in his 12th start of the season. Youman picked up his third win of the season in relief, and Guidry collected his sixth save.
“Anything can happen. It’s a baseball game,” LSU head coach Skip Bertman said. “You know you hits balls right at them, you have pitchers make certain pitches or they don’t. Today we hit a lot of good balls, but we didn’t have as much good fortune as we did the last two days. On the other hand, they really gutted up. I’m proud of (ULM head coach) Smoke Laval and his staff. They did a good job.”
The Tigers (46-17) were held scoreless until senior first baseman Brad Hawpe launched his eighth home run of the season to lead off the sixth inning. The Tigers plated two more runs courtesy of a two RBI single by sophomore Ryan Theriot, giving LSU a 3-0 lead.
ULM (41-21) answered in the bottom half of the sixth. Senior Willie Core laced a bases loaded double scoring two runs and finished today’s game 2-for-4. The Indians plated one more before the end of the frame to tie the score 3-3.
LSU regained the lead in the seventh when Hawpe hit his second solo home run of the game, his ninth of the year. The senior finished 2-for-4 with two RBI and three runs scored. Tiger designated hitter Wally Pontiff provided a security run in the top half of the ninth with an RBI single giving LSU a 5-3 lead. The true freshman continued to swing a hot post season bat finishing 3-for-5 for the game, 8-for-17 in the sub-regional tournament.
“I just went up there trying to get pitches to drive,” Hawpe said. “I’m starting to feel good at the plate, trying to get pitches to drive, trying to drive the ball more instead of just getting base hits and getting on and it happened to work out for me today.”
LSU will play the UCLA, in the NCAA Super Regional in a best of three series starting Friday, June 2. Should LSU play host to the Super Regional in Alex Box Stadium, the games would be played a 7 p.m. Friday, 4 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday (all times Central). The sites will be announced Monday at 2 p.m.
For NCAA Super Regional ticket information please call the LSU Ticket Office at (225) 388-2184.
2000 NCAA Baseball Regional All-Tournament Team
Brad Hawpe (LSU), 1B
Mike Fontenot (LSU), 2B
Sammy Cooper (UNO), SS
Willie Core (ULM), 3B
Brad Cresse (LSU) and Ted White (ULM), C
Elvis Nelson (JSU), OF
Johnnie Thibodeaux (LSU), OF
Jeremy Witten (LSU), OF
Wally Pontiff (LSU), DH
Kenny Holubec (ULM), P
Brian Tallet (LSU), P
Most Outstaning Player
Brad Hawpe (LSU)
Super Regional Match-ups
(best of three series — eight winners advances to College World Series in Omaha, Neb., on June 9-17)
UL-Lafayette at South Carolina
Nebraska at Stanford
San Jose St. at Houston
Mississippi St. at Clemson
UCLA at LSU
Penn St. at Texas
Miami (Fla.) at Florida St.
Southern Cal at Georgia Tech