FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — LSU looks to clinch its first Southeastern Conference baseball championship since 1997 this weekend when the Fighting Tigers travel to Arkansas to face the border rival Razorbacks in a three-game series at Baum Stadium.
The series gets underway on Friday at 6:30 p.m., with Saturday’s second game also at 6:30 p.m. The regular season for both teams concludes on Sunday at 1 p.m.
All three games will be broadcast by the LSU Sports Network (WDGL-98.1 FM in Baton Rouge), with live audio and live statistics from all games available on the Internet at www.lsusports.net. Sunday’s contest will also be televised throughout Louisiana by the Jumbo Sports Network (WGMB-Fox 44, cable channel 6 in Baton Rouge) and in other SEC markets by Comcast Sports Southeast.
LSU (35-17-1, 18-8-1) enters the weekend with a two and a half game lead over Auburn, Ole Miss and South Carolina, all of whom are 16-11 in the league, while Mississippi State is three games back at 15-10 in the conference. The Tigers will win the championship by defeating Arkansas once, or can win the title if the four teams trailing them all lose once.
Ole Miss and Auburn face each other this weekend on the Plains, while Mississippi St. hosts Alabama and South Carolina entertains Georgia.
The Tigers (No. 8 Collegiate Baseball, No. 10 Baseball America, No. 12 ESPN/USA Today) had a chance to clinch the championship in Sunday’s series finale against Auburn, but seven first-inning runs by the Tigers of the Plains led to a 14-8 defeat for LSU, which had already wrapped up the series by defeating Auburn in the first two games 6-5 and 20-3.
In preparation for post-season play, LSU coach Smoke Laval is adjusting his pitching rotation for this weekend’s series. The Tigers will start junior right-hander Nate Bumstead (8-2, 4.40) on Friday instead of freshman right-hander Justin Meier, who had started LSU’s last six Friday games. Meier (6-2, 3.00) will instead start Sunday’s game, with senior right-hander Bo Pettit (8-2, 4.91) taking his usual turn in the rotation on Saturday.
Bumstead will be looking to bounce back from his first SEC loss, as he gave up seven runs in just 2/3 of an inning on Sunday to Auburn. Bumstead is 7-1 with a 3.90 ERA in his eight SEC starts.
At the plate, LSU’s hottest hitter has been sophomore right fielder Jon Zeringue, who is batting .404 over the second half of the season and hit .533 (8-for-15) in the Tigers’ four games last week to raise his season average to .337. Junior shortstop Aaron Hill leads the SEC in doubles (24) and on-base percentage (.474), while junior third baseman Ivan Naccarata has an SEC high five triples on the year.
Arkansas (33-16, 13-14) came to within a half-game of LSU on April 19 after the Razorbacks won the first two games of their series at Auburn, but since then, the Hogs are just 2-8 in the SEC, and have suffered three-game sweeps on the road to Alabama and Tennessee in the past three weeks. The Razorbacks scored just four runs last weekend in Knoxville, as the Volunteers won a pair of extra-inning games.
Arkansas now finds itself tied for the last SEC Tournament berth with both Tennessee and Alabama, and needs two wins this weekend to assure itself of a place in the eight-team field.
The Razorbacks are in their first season under former Arkansas infielder Dave Van Horn, who took over for Hall of Fame coach Norm DeBriyn after taking Nebraska to the College World Series in 2001 and 2002.
Arkansas’ pitching rotation will likely remain the same from the Tennessee series, with senior right-hander Jarrett Gardner (4-3, 5.17) going to the mound on Friday, followed by junior left-hander Jay Sawatski (3-2, 3.05) on Saturday and redshirt freshman right-hander Charley Boyce (5-3, 3.32) on Sunday.
The Razorbacks feature the SEC’s leading home run hitter in senior center fielder Ryan Fox, who has launched 18 home runs on the year. Junior right fielder Andrew Wishy is tied with Fox for the team lead in RBI with 46 and is batting a team high .331 on the campaign.
LSU leads the all-time series with Arkansas, 33-14, and swept last year’s three-game series in Baton Rouge, as Lane Mestepey threw a four-hit, 3-0 shutout in the opener, and Brian Wilson threw a three-hit, 8-0 shutout, and then the Tigers won the finale, 13-5. The Tigers have won 11 consecutive meetings in Baton Rouge and are 21-4 all-time in games at Alex Box Stadium.
On the other hand, the Tigers have struggled in Fayetteville, losing six of the last seven meetings in the Ozarks, including a three-game sweep by Arkansas in 2001 (8-1, 5-4, 4-3) at a time when LSU was leading the SEC and ranked No. 1 in the nation. LSU is 8-7 all-time in Fayetteville, but just 3-6 at Baum Stadium since the Razorbacks’ facility opened in 1996.
This marks the first time LSU and Arkansas have met on the final weekend of the season since the Razorbacks left the Southwest Conference for the SEC in 1992, and this is the first time LSU is closing its season on the road since 1998, when the Tigers lost two games at Ole Miss.
LSU opens play in the Southeastern Conference tournament on Wednesday at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in Birmingham. Should the Tigers win the SEC championship, that opening round game will be no earlier than 8 p.m. against the No. 8 seed.