BATON ROUGE — LSU rallied from a 6-1 deficit by scoring nine unanswered runs in the third through fifth innings, while starting pitcher Bo Pettit once again overcame a slow start to help the Fighting Tigers clinch its Southeastern Conference series with Tennessee with a 10-6 victory on Saturday night before a season high paid crowd of 8,310 at Alex Box Stadium.
LSU (29-13-1, 14-5-1) retained its one and a half game lead over Auburn in the SEC West division, while moving two games in front of Mississippi State, whom the Tigers face next weekend in Starkville.
The Tigers (No. 8 Collegiate Baseball, No. 13 Baseball America, No. 17 ESPN/USA Today) can complete the three-game sweep of the Volunteers (24-19, 8-12) on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. Sunday’s game will be televised live by the Louisiana Sports Network (cable channel 10 in Baton Rouge) and can be seen in other SEC markets on Comcast Sports Southeast.
Under SEC travel regulations, no new inning of Sunday’s game can begin after 3:45 p.m. in order to allow Tennessee to catch its 6:10 p.m. flight out of Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport. LSU and Florida played to an 8-8 tie on March 16 when the game was called after nine innings to allow the Gators to catch their flight home.
Trailing 6-1 after two and a half innings, LSU began to chip into the Tennessee lead, first using a two-run single by Blake Gill in the bottom of the third to pull within 6-3, and then scoring twice more in the fourth to make it 6-5.
LSU got two runners on in the fifth with two out, but it appeared those runners would remain stranded when Tennessee right fielder Michael Rivera made a running catch of a Quinn Stewart fly ball that would end the inning and leave the Vols in the lead.
But Rivera ran out of room on the warning track, and when he crashed into the wall, the ball came tumbling free, and Stewart had himself a two-run triple, with Clay Harris and Jon Zeringue scoring to give LSU a 7-6 lead.
Actually, Stewart should have never come to bat, as a ground ball by Zeringue was booted by Tennessee shortstop Brian Cleveland one batter earlier.
The error and Rivera’s collision with the wall opened the floodgates for the Tigers, who took full advantage. Will Harris drew a two-out walk after Stewart’s hit, and one batter later, Matt Liuzza laced a double into right field to easily score Stewart and make it 8-6.
LSU tacked on two more runs on back-to-back singles by Bruce Sprowl and Ryan Patterson, giving the Tigers three consecutive games of 10 or more runs since last April in the final two games of their series with Georgia and a single game with Southern.
Tennessee starter Derek Tharpe (4-5) was once again victimized by a pair of Volunteer errors, as six of the nine runs he gave up were unearned, including all five in the fifth inning.
One week earlier at Kentucky, Tharpe struck out a career high 11 but a pair of Volunteer errors allowed the Wildcats to score two runs in the seventh inning to put the game out of reach.
For the second consecutive week, Pettit fell behind early, giving up four runs in the first inning as he did last Saturday at Vanderbilt.
Pettit plunked leadoff hitter Jordan Czarniecki and walked Josh Alley to put runners on first and second, and Czarniecki scored on a base hit up the middle by Nick Crowe.
Crowe stole second, the second stolen base of the inning for the Volunteers, and then Tennessee catcher Javi Herrera hit a bouncing shot just inside the first base bag into the right field corner. As the Volunteer runners rounded the bases, LSU right fielder Jon Zeringue appeared to lose the ball in the tarp sitting down the right field line.
Zeringue threw up his hands in an attempt to signal to first base umpire Fred Cannon the ball had been lost, but Cannon, standing just behind first base, refused to acknowledge Zeringue, allowing Herrera to race unfettered across the plate for an inside the park home run and a 4-0 Tennessee lead. LSU coach Smoke Laval argued for several minutes, trying to explain to Cannon that Zeringue had indeed thrown up his hands to indicate the ball had been lost, but the argument fell on deaf ears.
The inside the park home run was the first at Alex Box Stadium since LSU’s Cedrick Harris raced around the bases against Nicholls State on March 17, 1999, and the first allowed by the Tigers since Arkansas’ Brent Caldwell hit one on March 21, 1998, in Baton Rouge.
LSU got on the board in the bottom of the first when Ryan Patterson lined a solo home run into the left field bleachers, but the Tigers would fall further behind at 6-1 when Volunteer third baseman Kyle Norrid launched a two-out, two-run home run into the left field bleachers.
But after Norrid’s home run, Pettit settled down and worked eight innings and finished with eight strikeouts to run his record to 7-1. Pettit gave up just two singles and one walk in the fourth through eighth innings and faced one batter over the minimum in those frames.
The comeback win was LSU’s 11th of the season, and represented the largest deficit the Tigers have overcome to win a game in 2003.
Tennessee (24-19, 8-12) 402 000 000– 6 7 2
LSU (29-13-1, 14-5-1) 102 250 00x– 10 10 0
Derek Tharpe, Steve Wesley (5), Beau Massey (7) and Javi Herrera; Bo Pettit, Billy Sadler (9) and Matt Liuzza.
WP–Pettit, 7-1.
LP–Tharpe, 4-5.
2B–LSU: Will Harris (3).
3B–LSU: Quinn Stewart (1), Matt Liuzza (2).
HR–Tennessee: Javi Herrera (7), Kyle Norrid (4); LSU: Ryan Patterson (8).
T–3:03.
A–8,310 (paid); 5,547 (actual)