BATON ROUGE — The fourth-ranked LSU Tiger softball team needs only one win over the Auburn Tigers this weekend to capture its third-consecutive Southeastern Conference Championship.
LSU travels to Auburn, Ala., for the final SEC series of the season with a doubleheader on Saturday and a single game on Sunday.
The games will be carried by the LSU Sports Network on 107.3 FM in Baton Rouge and over the Internet at www.LSUsports.net. Saturday’s doubleheader will start at 5 p.m., and Sunday’s start is scheduled for 1 p.m.
“This will be an eventful weekend for us,” said head coach Yvette Girouard. “We hope to continue with what we have been doing. We have swept the last four SEC series. We only need one win for the SEC Title, but we would like to sweep and finish things off with a statement.”
The two-time defending SEC Champion LSU Tigers are now one win away from doing what they were not expected to do, add a third SEC Championship to
their name. In the preseason SEC coaches poll, LSU was picked to finish second in the SEC Western Division behind Alabama. After making an appearance at the Women’s College World Series, Alabama received six votes to win the SEC title, with LSU receiving four and South Carolina with one.
The Tigers swept the Crimson Tide when they came to Baton Rouge after Tennessee had taken one game from them, and South Carolina added a pair of losses to their record to put them at 24-6 in the SEC for the season. LSU enters the weekend with Auburn standing at 24-3 in Conference play, so one win on Saturday will make them back-to-back-to-back SEC Champions and give the Tigers their fifth Western Division Title in a row.
The Tigers are 47-8 overall, and Auburn enters the weekend 28-28 overall and 9-18 in the SEC. Auburn also has a lot riding on this weekend. They are playing for one of the last two spots in the SEC Tournament.
LSU leads the all-time series with Auburn 15-2. Auburn did, however, take a game from LSU last season at Tiger Park.
In game one, an unearned run was all that separated the two teams in LSU’s 6-5 win. Auburn took a 5-0 lead in the third inning and held on to it for an inning. LSU came back in the fifth inning to score five runs with only one out. After an Auburn pitching change, LSU scored one more run to win the game.
Game two did not go LSU’s way as Auburn held the Tigers to only two hits and one run. Dee Douglas had one of the two hits and scored the only run.
Games three and four ended up with identical scores of 9-1 in six innings the next day. In game one, LSU out hit Auburn 10-1, and in game two the LSU Tigers had 13 hits. Stephanie Hastings went five-for-five in the two games with four runs and two RBI.
Following the weekend with Auburn, LSU will gear up for the start of postseason play at the SEC tournament. The Tigers have clinched the No. 1 seed to the tournament and will face the No. 8 seed at 8 p.m. on Thursday night.