BATON ROUGE — LSU pitcher Bo Pettit kept the Fighting Tigers’ season alive with his third consecutive complete game and his fourth win in his last five outings as LSU eliminated archrival Tulane 4-2 Saturday night in the Baton Rouge regional at Alex Box Stadium.
LSU (42-20), which lost 5-0 to Louisiana-Lafayette earlier in the afternoon, will face the Ragin’ Cajuns Sunday at 1 p.m. in the championship round.
Should LSU win that game, a second game for all the marbles will take place at approximately 5 p.m. The winner of the regional advances to face the winner of the Houston regional final between Rice and Washington next weekend in a best-of-three super regional.
Pettit, a junior right-hander from Houston, made the most of his first career NCAA Tournament appearance, struck out 11, just one shy of his career high, in improving to 9-7.
Tulane had the chance to rally from a 4-2 deficit in the ninth, as Michael Aubrey led off with a double and Gerald Clark drew a one-out walk to put the tying run on base. Turner Brumby then grounded out with a half-swing to move the runners up into scoring position, pinch hitter Bryan Stelmack took a called third strike to end the Green Wave’s season.
LSU had opportunities in each of the first two innings to break the game open, but failed to do so both times. In the first, the Tigers got back-to-back singles from Aaron Hill and Wally Pontiff and a walk to Matt Heath to load the bases, but the bases would remain loaded when Rocky Scelfo grounded into a force play.
Back-to-back doubles in the second by David Raymer and Chris Phillips did score the game’s first run in the second, but LSU missed an opportunity with two runners on and one out as Hill and Pontiff popped up to leave it only 1-0.
Tulane tied the game in the bottom of the second on Brumby’s RBI single, but the Tigers would regain the lead in the top of the third when Scelfo singled home Sean Barker, who led off the inning with a double into the right field corner.
Raymer led off the fourth inning with a home run to right field to make it 3-1 and drive Tulane starting pitcher Kris Kline from the game after Kline had given up three runs on seven hits in three-plus innings.
Reliever Joey Charron struck out Phillips and got Holt to ground out, but he soon dug the Green Wave a further hole when Hill homered over the left field bleachers to extend LSU’s lead to 4-1.
Charron gave up a single to Pontiff and a double to Barker, but avoided further damage by getting Heath to fly out to right, and the Wave left-hander would go on to retire 14 of the next 16 batters he faced in the remainder of the game.
Tulane, however, could not take advantage, as their only other run came in the fifth on a Tommy Manzella solo home run.
Game 2: ULL 5, LSU 0
BATON ROUGE — Louisiana-Lafayette’s Andy Gros fired his second complete game shutout against LSU this season, scattering seven hits as the Ragin Cajuns advanced to the championship round of the Baton Rouge regional with a 5-0 victory in front of a stunned crowd at Alex Box Stadium.
LSU (41-20) must regroup immediately to play an elimination game against archrival Tulane (36-26), who eliminated Southern 10-2 earlier on Saturday. The winner of the night game must defeat the Cajuns (39-21) twice to advance to the super regional.
The championship round is slated for 1 p.m. Sunday, with a second game if necessary scheduled for 5 p.m.
The shutout was just the third suffered by LSU in 203 post-season games, with the other two coming on consecutive days in the 1992 South I Regional to Ohio State (5-0) and Cal State Fullerton (11-0).
Gros also allowed the Tigers just seven hits in his shutout win on March 19 in Lafayette, as UL-Lafayette has allowed LSU just one run in winning all three meetings between the clubs in 2002. The Cajuns are the first team to shut out LSU twice in the same season since Ole Miss blanked the Tigers in the final two games of 1982.
LSU’s only real threats of the game came in the fifth and sixth, when the Tigers advanced runners to third base each time, only to have the rallies end, first on a Wally Pontiff fly ball in the fifth and on J.C. Holt’s line drive in the sixth.
The early innings shaped up as the expected pitching duel between Gros and LSU ace Lane Mestepey, who entered this game with a streak of 23 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings at home and had allowed just five runs in his previous 42 innings, retired the first 10 batters he faced until he yielded a one-out home run in the fourth to Justin Bourque to break the scoreless tie.
The Cajuns would strand a runner at third in the fifth, but in the sixth, they would score another run with the help of a Pontiff error, as he misplayed Dallas Morris’ ground ball. Morris would eventually score on Corey Coles’ two-out bunt single that neither Pontiff nor Mestepey could field.
A one-out home run by Bryan Sneed put the game out of reach for the Cajuns, but UL-Lafayette would add runs in the eighth and ninth, scoring in the eighth on an RBI single by Coles that plated Bourque, who doubled two batters earlier, and in the ninth, the Cajuns got an unearned run when Rocky Scelfo misplayed Phillip Hawke’s ground ball, scoring Chase Lambin from second.
Mestepey took his first loss since May 4 at Tennessee to drop to 11-4 on the year despite walking none and striking out sixth in his eighth complete game of the year.
Game 1: Tulane 10, Southern 2 (Southern eliminated)
BATON ROUGE — Tulane’s Beau Richardson limited Southern to one earned run and six hits in pitching a complete game to propel the Green Wave past the Jaguars, 10-2 in an elimination game at the Baton Rouge regional Saturday at Alex Box Stadium.
Tulane (36-26) awaits the loser of the upcoming Louisiana-Lafayette-LSU game tonight at 7:30 p.m. in an elimination game. Southern (45-10) has now dropped five consecutive NCAA regional contests to fall to 2-10 all-time in regional competition.
Richardson, who last year pitched a complete game in the clinching game of the super regional against LSU to send Tulane to the College World Series for the first time, did not allow a run over the first 5 1/3 innings in improving to 7-5 on the season.
The Green Wave loaded the bases without a hit in the second, as Southern’s Eric Thomas hit Michael Aubrey, then issued two-out walks to Turner Brumby and Brian Bormaster before Tommy Manzella cashed in with a two-run single to give Tulane its first lead of the regional.
Southern didn’t threaten until the third, when the Jaguars loaded the bases with one out, but Richardson left Southern scoreless by retiring Antoin Gray on a pop-up and Rickie Weeks on a fly ball to center.
Tulane put the game out of Southern’s reach with a five-run fifth. It started with a base hit by Aaron Feldman and a walk to James Jurries, and two batters later, Anthony Giarratano singled up the middle to score Feldman and make it 3-0 in the Wave’s favor.
Gerald Clark continued the onslaught with a base hit just inside the third base bag to score Feldman and chase Southern starter Eric Thomas from the game.
Jaguar reliever Jason Anderson promptly walked Brumby to load the bases before Bormaster hit a soft ground ball back to the mound. Anderson made an underhanded throw to try and retire Giarratano, but instead the ball bounded into right field, scoring Clark for a 6-0 lead. Manzella’s ground ball scored Brumby with the inning’s final run one batter later.
Thomas gave up six earned runs on six hits over 4 1/3 innings in falling to 7-2, as the Jaguars used four pitcher in a failed attempt to keep their season alive.
Southern wouldn’t score until the sixth, when a throwing error by Giarratano scored Weeks from first base.
Weeks, whose batting average has hovered around .500 most of the year, hit a solo home run in the bottom of the seventh in his final at-bat of the season. Tulane, though, would score twice in the ninth, one on a throwing error by Carl Primus and another on Brumby’s RBI double.
2002 Baton Rouge Regional
Game 3: Southern vs. Tulane
Quotes from Southern Head Coach Roger Cador
“Today we didn’t play our typical game. We were pretty flat coming out of the box. Brandon Mason leads the game off with a base hit, and then on the second pitch he gets picked off after that. That really took a little wind out of the sails. From there we were not able to mount any kind of offensive momentum.
“Tulane got two runs, and then (Beau) Richardson pitched very well. He was able to stay ahead in the count. When he wanted to go off the plate with a curve ball, he did that.”
“We are a little more disappointed, because against Tulane we felt we had a legitimate chance with their pitcher had we executed. We just didn’t do the job like we are capable of. We will profit from this type of experience.”
Quotes from Southern pitcher Eric Thomas
“Mostly I got behind in my counts. Usually nine out of 10 times you get behind in the count, and then you walk batters. You have got to stay on top of your game. Those first batters walk and got runs. It hurts you and beats you down. I try to at least stay ahead in my counts later on in the inning. We made our adjustments, but they are a quality team.”
Quotes from Southern second baseman Rickie Weeks
“Me personally I had a pretty good game at the plate. I was seeing the ball well, but overall we left too many runners on base. We left the bases loaded with less than two outs. We got a guy up there that usually hits the ball pretty good, but he didn’t come up with that. He hit the ball pretty hard, but they played it very well. You have to run with that.
“Overall I do not think that we hit the ball like we should be. We came back and just tried to swing the bat.”
Quotes from Tulane Head Coach Rick Jones
“Southern is an outstanding hitting ball club. I think they only had six or seven hits. That shows just how well he (Beau Richardson) pitched.”
“Offensively we had some energy. Tommy (Manzella’s) hit was big in that it gave us that two run lead early. I also thought the double play in the seventh was a big play at the time, even though we stretched the score a bit. They have a lot of big guns in the lineup, so a five or six run lead is not much.”
“We did not want to go to our bullpen. We would have loved to do what we did and that is get a CG (complete game) out of Beau. The bottom line is just that Beau had a great day.”
“I know we have some odds stacked against us, but you just play it one game at a time. Everybody has to believe that we can do it. Realize we are in the NCAA Tournament and that makes you special to begin with. Your next day’s pitcher is your momentum and Beau gave us that momentum.”
“Another key to this ballgame was that Beau made a great pitch to (Rickie) Weeks to get out of a bases loaded situation. That was a huge pitch.”
on Rickie Weeks
“He is a really nice ballplayer. I promise you all he did was flip his wrists when he hit that line drive out of the ballpark. That kid is going to play in the big leagues for a long time if he stays healthy.”
Quotes from Tulane starting pitcher Beau Richardson
“Being that we lost the last game, I figured I had to keep my pitch count down. I needed to stay in the game as long as possible and go the whole way if I could. Luckily today I was able to do that. We were really aggressive with the bats and played outstanding defense all day.”
Quotes from Tulane second baseman Turner Brumby
“Beau gave us a good game, and we were just trying to score some runs behind him. Luckily enough we put the hits together and got it done today.”
Quotes from Tulane shortstop Tommy Manzella
on his two-run single
“He walked the last two batters before me, so I knew he was going to try to get ahead in the count. He did not want to walk the nine-hole batter and get to the top of the order. I got a fastball and put the bat on the ball.”