BATON ROUGE — LSU squandered a 5-0 lead as Tulane rallied for a 6-5 victory Tuesday night at Alex Box Stadium, handing the Fighting Tigers (10-5) their fifth loss in the last six meetings against the archrival Green Wave (9-5).
The Tigers (No. 6 Baseball America and ESPN/Baseball Weekly, No. 8 Collegiate Baseball) return to action on Friday at 6:30 p.m. when they host Louisiana-Monroe in the opener of a three-game series.
The Wave scored two unearned runs in the sixth to take the lead that would hold up.
Gerald Clark’s one out double put the tying run in scoring position, then Tommy Manzella hit a comebacker to the mound. But LSU pitcher Lukas Guidroz threw the ball away, allowing Manzella to reach and sending Clark across the plate to tie the game at 5-5. Guidroz struck out Jon Kaplan for the second out, but then uncorked a wild pitch to move Manzella to third before giving up an infield hit to James Jurries.
LSU shortstop Rocky Scelfo then compounded the problem by throwing the ball away in an attempt to retire Jurries, allowing Manzella to score the go-ahead run.
The Tigers, who overcame two deficits to win in 11 innings on Sunday against Long Beach State, looked good early in taking a 4-0 lead in the first.
Tulane pitcher Michael Aubrey hit Rocky Scelfo to star the Tiger first, and singles by Wally Pontiff and Sean Barker loaded the bases. Aubrey got the Green Wave’s first out when Matt Heath hit into a force play, but Scelfo scored to give LSU a 1-0 lead.
Tiger pitcher Clay Harris helped his own cause with a double to score Pontiff for a 2-0 LSU lead, and Eric Wiethorn followed with a single to plate Heath and make it 3-0. Jon Zeringue hit into another force play to bring across the final Tiger tally of the inning.
Tulane appeared to be ready to make an immediate comeback, loading the bases on three singles, but Harris snuffed out the threat by fanning Manzella.
The Wave fell behind 5-0 when Chris Phillips led off the fourth with a home run, but that would be the last that the Tigers would get off of Aubrey, a 2001 Freshman All-American.
Clark and Manzella began the Tulane comeback with back-to-back base hits to lead off the fifth, but after walking Kaplan to load the bases, Harris appeared to settle down by getting Aaron Feldman to hit a fly ball to short right field that Blake Gill made a running catch on, then striking out Jurries for the second out.
Aubrey finally got the Wave on the board with a two-run double to right field to make it 5-2, then Bryan Stelmack laced a base hit to left field to score Kaplan and Aubrey to make it a 5-4 contest.
Aubrey walked five and struck out none over 5 2/3 innings, but still improved to 2-0. Wave reliever Joey Charron pitched 3 1/3 scoreless innings to earn his third save. Harris, making his second start on the mound, struck out eight and walked one in 5 1/3 innings, got no decision as Guidroz (0-1) took the loss.
LSU would have two good chances to at least tie the game after falling behind. The Tigers got the first two runners on in the sixth, but Pontiff failed to move them over on a sacrifice bunt and Heath hit into a bases-loaded force play to end the inning. In the eighth, Pontiff and Barker had back-to-back singles to put runners on the corners, but Heath struck out to douse the rally.
Wiethorn collected his first career four hit game, while Pontiff went 3-for-5 to pace LSU’s 12-hit attack. Clark was 3-for-4 as eight of the nine Tulane batters got at least one hit.