BATON ROUGE — Louisiana-Lafayette hurler Justin Gabriel fired a complete-game and the Ragin Cajuns scored two runs off of LSU ace Lane Mestepey as UL-Lafayette (12-6) took a 2-1 victory Tuesday night at Alex Box Stadium.
The Fighting Tigers (13-6) will open Southeastern Conference play on Friday at 6:30 p.m. when they welcome Vanderbilt in the opener of a three-game weekend series.
Gabriel, the ace of the Cajuns’ staff when UL-Lafayette made it to the College World Series in 2000 but was suspended last year, allowed only two LSU runners to get as far as second base in the first eight innings.
The Seattle native finished with eight strikeouts to improve to 3-1 on the season.
LSU got six shutout innings from starter Jake Tompkins, who struck out six and gave up just three hits and was relieved by Mestepey to start the seventh.
But Mestepey hit Cajun leadoff batter Bryan Sneed, and then moved to second on Chase Lambin’s sacrifice bunt and to third on a wild pitch.
Phillip Hawke then broke a scoreless tie by lifting a fly ball to the right field wall to easily score Sneed.
Mestepey, who gave up on run in each of his last two starts, would yield the eventual winning run in the top of the ninth on a single by Jason Wilson past the drawn-in LSU infield. Justin Bourque scored the run after leading off with a double.
The Tigers would lead off the bottom of the ninth on with a single by Wally Pontiff, who went to second on Corey Coles’ error. Clay Harris’ ground ball got Pontiff to third before Sean Barker’s single off of Gabriel’s glove. But the Tigers stranded runners on the corners to fall to 6-4 in one-run games.
Mestepey took his first loss since last May 13 against Auburn, and this was his first loss against a non-SEC foe.