BATON ROUGE — Kansas State handed LSU its first loss in a home opener since 1982 when the Wildcats took a 9-8 victory in the first game of a doubleheader Saturday at Alex Box Stadium. However the Tigers came back to shutout Kansas State in the nightcap, 4-0, behind a terrific performance by Shane Youman and Brian Moore.
The Tigers play much better on both sides of the frame in the nightcap, as Moore drove in four runs and Youman pitched eight shutout innings to pace a 4-0 victory.
The victory in the nightcap allowed LSU to avoid what would have been only its second 0-2 start in coach Skip Bertman‘s 18-year tenure; the 1994 Tigers dropped games to Auburn and South Alabama at the Winn-Dixie Showdown in New Orleans. Bertman, who is in his final year as LSU coach before taking over as the school’s athletic director, is 15-3 in season openers.
The third-ranked Tigers (1-1) and Wildcats (3-1) play the rubber match of the three-game set on Sunday at 1 p.m. Because of the LSU men’s basketball game at 7 p.m. on Saturday night, the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader was not broadcast on the LSU Sports Network nor, consequently, LSUsports.net. Sunday’s game will be carried on LSUsports.net and the LSU Sports Network.
In the second game of the day, the Tigers broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the fourth when Moore, starting in place of Zeph Zinsman at first base, laced a two-run single into left-center to score Wally Pontiff and Mike Fontenot.
Fontenot, the 2000 national Freshman of the Year, was not expected to start while recovering from hand surgery, but he came through with a double in the fourth to set up Moore’s hit.
Moore added an insurance two-run homer in the sixth, and it would be more than enough for Youman, as the junior southpaw allowed just two walks and scattered six hits to pick up the win.
In the first game, the Wildcats used a six-run third inning to take a 9-1 lead, only to have LSU come back with a five-run sixth before holding on for the one-run victory.
LSU had runners on base in each of the final three innings, but each time came up empty. In the eighth, K-State reliever Kelvin Day got Todd Linden to ground into a double play, and in the ninth, the Tigers were victimized by a poor baserunning play when Johnnie Thibodeaux was caught in a rundown between first and second.
Thibodeaux’s error was not helped by the fact that batter Zeph Zinsman thought he had walked, when the count was really 3-0. When Thibodeaux saw Zinsman begin to trot to first, Thibodeaux was hung up.
K-State struck first in the top of the first for two runs on Josh Cavender’s two-run single that was set up when Casey Weishaar looped a double just inside the right-field foul line. The call on Weishaar’s hit drew animated protests from the crowd of 7,467 as well as a brief protest from Bertman.
The Tigers got a run in the bottom of the first on Aaron Hill’s RBI single, but the Wildcats then took over with their big inning.
Lucas Pfannenstiel struck out to begin the inning, but eight straight Wildcats would reach base after that, four of them on walks, including bases-loaded passes by reliever Brian Wilson to Weishaar and Mark English.
Justin Hill relieved Wilson and promptly hit Pat Maloney to force home another run, then yielded a two-run double to Cavender, whose sinking line drive fell just in front of l Linden and just inside the left-field foul line, drawing another animated round of boos from the Tiger faithful.
J.D. Loudabarger greeted LSU reliever Tim Nugent, the fourth pitcher of the fourth ining, with an RBI single to score Maloney before Nugent stopped the bleeding by striking out Pfannenstiel and getting Nick Scelfo to ground into a fielder’s choice.
Trailing 9-3 entering the sixth, the Tigers had their explosion in the sixth, highlighted by a two-run single by Theriot along with run-scoring hits by Chris Phillips and Wally Pontiff. But the uprising fell short of tying the game when Thibodeaux hit into a fielder’s choice with the bases loaded.