BATON ROUGE — The LSU baseball team is ranked No. 5 in the 2002 Collegiate Baseball magazine pre-season Top 40 poll released Thursday.
The Tigers, who return five starting position players and seven pitchers from their 2001 SEC Western Division championship club, received 486 points in the poll to place fifth behind No. 1 Stanford (497 points), No. 2 Florida State (495 points), No. 3 Tulane (491 points) and No. 4 Southern California (489 points).
Clemson is No. 6 in the 2002 rankings, followed by defending national champion Miami (Fla.), South Carolina, Wichita State and Oklahoma State.
Other Southeastern Conference teams appearing in the poll include No. 14 Ole Miss, No. 21 Florida and No. 23 Mississippi State.
Along with No. 3 Tulane, LSU’s 2002 non-conference opponents appearing in the poll include No. 34 Louisiana-Lafayette and No. 37 Long Beach State.
LSU will play a total of 19 games against teams ranked in the Collegiate Baseball pre-season Top 40.
The Tigers begin the 2002 regular season on Friday, Feb. 8, against Birmingham Southern in the first game of a three-game weekend series in Alex Box Stadium.
The 2002 campaign marks the LSU head coaching debut of Smoke Laval, a former LSU assistant coach and the head coach at Louisiana-Monroe from 1994-2000. Laval replaces Skip Bertman, who in 18 seasons guided the Tigers to five NCAA titles and 11 appearances in the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. While working with Bertman for 10 seasons as an assistant coach (1984-93), Laval helped lead LSU to two national championships (1991, 1993), six College World Series appearances and five Southeastern Conference titles.
2002 Collegiate Baseball Pre-Season Top 40
(2001 record in parentheses)
1. Stanford (51-17)
2. Florida State (47-19)
3. Tulane (56-13)
4. Southern California (45-19)
5. LSU (44-22-1)
6. Clemson (41-22)
7. Miami, Fla. (53-12)
8. South Carolina (49-20)
9. Wichita State (42-24)
10. Oklahoma State (42-22)
11. Fresno State (41-25)
12. Rice (47-20)
13. Nebraska (50-16)
14. Ole Miss (39-23-1)
15. Texas (36-26)
16. Wake Forest (44-18)
17. Cal State Fullerton (48-18)
18. Baylor (37-24)
19. Notre Dame (49-13-1)
20. Arizona State (37-20-1)
21. Florida (35-27)
22. Georgia Tech (41-20)
23. Mississippi State (39-24)
24. Ohio State (43-18)
25. Rutgers (42-17)
26. Texas Tech (43-20-1)
27. Purdue (32-24)
28. Ball State (34-23)
29. East Carolina (47-13)
30. Texas A&M (33-27)
31. Oral Roberts (48-13)
32. Georgia Southern (42-20)
33. Cal State Northridge (34-22)
34. Louisiana-Lafayette (28-28)
35. Nevada-Reno (30-26)
36. Winthrop (48-16)
37. Long Beach State (35-23)
38. California (34-25)
39. Stetson (43-17)
40. Central Florida (51-14)