BATON ROUGE — Coming off of its first trip to California in its 110-year history, the LSU baseball team returns to Alex Box Stadium on Wednesday night for a 6:30 p.m. contest against Southeastern Louisiana.
Due to a conflict with the LSU-Ole Miss men’s basketball game, the radio broadcast of the game will be available in Baton Rouge only on WJNH-107.3 FM. The broadcast will also be available on the Internet at www.lsusports.net.
The game will be televised by Cox Sports Television (cable channel 38 in Baton Rouge) on a tape-delayed basis at 7 p.m. Saturday.
LSU (7-6) dropped two of three to Long Beach St. on the west coast this past weekend, but gained some momentum for this week’s four-game homestand with a solid 7-2 victory in the series finale on Sunday. In that victory over the Dirtbags, the Tigers (No. 16 Baseball America, No. 18 Collegiate Baseball) banged out 14 hits, the second highest total of the season, with every LSU player getting at least one hit.
The Tigers’ hottest hitter has been junior infielder Ivan Naccarata, who enters the SLU contest with a 10-game hitting streak. Naccarata is batting .359 (14-for-39) during the streak to raise his season average to .326, the second highest mark on the team. The junior college transfer from Quebec also leads the Tigers with 10 RBI.
Sophomore outfielder J.C. Holt leads LSU with a .349 batting average after collecting two hits in each of the final two games of the Long Beach series. Sophomore outfielder Ryan Patterson hit two home runs in California and is tied for the team lead with sophomore designated hitter Quinn Stewart with three home runs on the year.
On the mound, the Tigers will start freshman right-hander Justin Meier (2-0, 0.90), who will be pitching for the first time since going five innings in a 9-4 victory over Louisiana-Monroe on February 18.
SLU (3-5) is under the leadership of first-year coach Dan Canevari, a long-time assistant coach at LSU under Skip Bertman and Smoke Laval. Canevari began at LSU as a graduate assistant on the 1991 national championship team, and later served as administrative assistant (1993-97) and pitching coach (1998-2002), and other than Bertman, was the only person to be involved with all five LSU national championship teams.
As pitching coach, Canevari guided Tiger hurlers to the Southeastern Conference ERA crown in 1998 and 2002. Canevari becomes the fifth former Bertman assistant to join the head coaching ranks, along with Laval (Louisiana-Monroe, LSU), Randy Davis (Louisiana Tech), Mike Bianco (McNeese St., Ole Miss) and Jim Wells (Northwestern St., Alabama).
The Lions, who have not played since losing 7-1 at Tulane on February 25, are scheduled to start sophomore right-hander Risley St. Germain (0-0, 4.32) on the mound.
LSU holds a 47-16 all-time edge in the series, and has won 17 of 19 meetings since 1990. The Lions broke a 17-game losing streak in the series with a 4-3 victory last February 12 at Baton Rouge, but the Tigers won their seventh straight at Hammond with a 9-7 victory on March 26.
Laval is 11-5 in his career against SLU, including a 10-4 mark as the coach at Louisiana-Monroe.
LSU continues the homestand this weekend with a three-game series against Winthrop. The series opener is at 6:30 p.m. Friday, but Saturday’s game time has been changed from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. to allow fans to attend the LSU-Alabama men’s basketball game at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday’s series finale is set for 1 p.m.