BATON ROUGE — For the second time this winter, the LSU baseball team has earned a top 10 preseason ranking, as Baseball America magazine ranked the Fighting Tigers ninth in its preseason poll, which was released on Thursday.
Also, Baseball America named LSU junior infielder Aaron Hill as a preseason second team All-American.
LSU, which was ranked sixth in the Collegiate Baseball newspaper poll that was released prior to Christmas, is coming off of a 44-22 season in 2002 that saw the Tigers reach an NCAA super regional for the fourth consecutive year, making LSU one of only six schools to reach the super regionals in every year since the format was instituted in 1999.
Georgia Tech, which finished tied for fifth in last year’s College World Series, earned Baseball America’s top spot, followed by Rice, the team that eliminated LSU in last year’s super regional at Houston. Stanford and Florida State were third and fourth, while defending national champion Texas, the top-ranked team in the Collegiate Baseball preseason poll, was fifth.
As was the case in the Collegiate Baseball poll, LSU was the highest ranked Southeastern Conference team. Other SEC teams in the Baseball America poll are defending SEC champion South Carolina (14th), Mississippi State (17th) and Auburn (21st).
Hill, a native of Visalia, Calif., was a member of the United States national team that captured the silver medal in the World University games in Italy in August. Hill, who was the Tigers’ starting shortstop in 2002 but is projected to move to third base in 2003, batted .329 with nine home runs and 47 RBI as a sophomore.
Baseball America’s pre-season All-America teams were selected by a survey of major league scouting directors, who evaluated players based upon performance, talent and major league potential.
LSU begins its second season under coach Smoke Laval on Feb. 7 when the Tigers open a three-game series at Alex Box Stadium against Northwestern State.