BATON ROUGE — LSU looks to keep the momentum of its series victory over Long Beach State going on Tuesday night when the Fighting Tigers (10-4) renew their oldest rivalry against in-state foe Tulane (8-5) at 6:30 p.m. at Alex Box Stadium.
The game will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Network (WDGL-98.1 FM in Baton Rouge) and over the Internet at www.lsusports.net.
The contest is also scheduled to be televised on a tape-delay basis in the Baton Rouge area starting at 9 p.m. on WGMB-Fox 44.
The Tigers enter the game ranked sixth by Baseball America, up three spots from last week’s poll, and are eighth in the Collegiate Baseball survey, the same spot LSU occupied last week. Tulane is ranked 23rd by Collegiate Baseball and 24th by Baseball America. The new ESPN/Baseball Weekly poll was to be released later on Monday.
LSU two of three games from nationally ranked Long Beach over the weekend, losing the opener, 8-3, before bouncing back for 10-2 and 5-4 victories in the final two games of the series. The Tigers won Sunday’s finale on an 11th-inning home run by Matt Heath to improve to 4-2 this year in one-run contests.
Tulane comes in after losing two of three to UCLA over the weekend at Turchin Stadium. The Green Wave opened the season by losing two of three against Pepperdine before sweeping Villanova and winning two of three from George Washington.
The Wave returns several key players from the 56-13 club that made the school’s first ever College World Series trip in 2001, including third baseman James Jurries, who leads Tulane with a .444 batting average, four home runs and 19 RBI.
Tulane will likely start sophomore left-hander Michael Aubrey (1-0, 5.54). Aubrey, a 2001 freshman All-American, started against the Tigers in game one of last year’s NCAA super regional and gave up two runs over six innings. LSU will likely counter with freshman right-hander Clay Harris (1-0, 4.09), whose only other career start was a two-inning outing on February 24 at Houston.
LSU leads the 109-year old series with Tulane, 151-114-3, but the Green Wave won four of the five meetings between the teams in 2001. Tulane swept the two regular-season meetings, 13-3 at Baton Rouge on March 7 and 7-6 at Zephyr Field on April 11. LSU won the opening game of the super regional at Zephyr Field, 4-3 in 13 innings, but the Wave won the final two games, 9-4 and 7-1, to earn the trip to Omaha.
LSU and Tulane will meet again on April 10 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans in an attempt to break the NCAA single-game regular-season attendance record of 21,043 set in 1996 for a Texas-TCU game at the Ballpark in Arlington, home of the Texas Rangers.
LSU season-ticket holders can purchase tickets for the game at the Superdome from the LSU ticket office starting at 8 a.m. Tuesday by visiting the ticket office in the LSU Athletic Administration Building or calling (225) 578-2184.
LSU continues its season-long 11-game homestand on Friday at 6:30 p.m. when it hosts Louisiana-Monroe in the opening game of a three-game series. The Tigers begin Southeastern Conference play on Friday, March 15 at home against Vanderbilt.