INDIANAPOLIS — For the 14th consecutive year, LSU’s Alex Box Stadium will play host to an NCAA regional baseball tournament, as the NCAA Division I baseball committee named the 16 schools that will host the four-team tournaments on Sunday.
LSU will begin play in the Baton Rouge regional on Friday at 2 p.m., with the second game to follow at 7 p.m. Games continue on Saturday at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., with Sunday’s championship round starting at 1 p.m. If a second championship game is necessary, it will be played approximately 50 minutes after the completion of the first game.
The entire 64-team field for the NCAA tournament, along with the eight national seeds, will be announced live on ESPN2 on Monday at 11:30 a.m.
A limited number of tickets to the NCAA Regional will be available through the LSU Ticket Office beginning at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.
The Fighting Tigers earned the right to host a regional with its 40-18-1 record heading into the championship game of the Southeastern Conference tournament against Alabama. LSU won the SEC regular season championship with a 20-9-1 conference record.
“The tradition is there, and this says a lot about how we put on tournaments,” LSU coach Smoke Laval said. “This club overcame a lot of obstacles, even starting back in July with the death of Wally Pontiff, and the dominoes kept falling from there.
“These guys have overcame a lot, and they keep proving to the LSU fans and themselves that they’re not looking for excuses, but rather take care of the task at hand.”
LSU is one of three Southeastern Conference schools to be named regional hosts, along with Auburn and Mississippi State.
Other on-campus regional hosts are Arizona State, Cal St. Fullerton, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Long Beach State, Miami (Fla.), Nebraska, Rice, Southern Mississippi, Stanford, Texas and Texas A&M.
North Carolina State will host its regional at Wilson, N.C., 50 miles east of its campus in Raleigh. The Wolfpack’s home stadium, Doak Field, is undergoing major renovations and will not be ready for a regional until 2004.
LSU hosted its first regional in 1986, and has hosted every year since 1990, compiling a sparkling 52-10 mark in home regional contests. In 12 of the previous 14 regionals in Baton Rouge, the Tigers have emerged as champion.
The first eight of those championships (1986, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997 and 1998) sent LSU to the College World Series, while regional championships in each of the past four years advanced the Tigers to the super regional round.
The only other team to win a regional in Baton Rouge is Cal St. Fullerton, which won in 1992 and 1995.
The regionals are the first step on college baseball’s Road to Omaha. The 16 regional winners will advance to the best-of-three super regional round, which will run either June 6-8 or June 7-9. Those sites will be announced on Monday, June 2, with priority to host going to the eight national seeds.
“We’ve still got to keep getting better,” Laval said. “I tip my hit to this club and this coaching staff, because they got us going and have kept it together.”
The eight super regional winners advance to the College World Series, which runs June 13-23 at Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium.
2003 NCAA Regional Sites
Atlanta, Ga. (Georgia Tech)
Auburn, Ala. (Auburn)
Austin, Texas (Texas)
Baton Rouge, La. (LSU)
College Station, Texas (Texas A&M)
Coral Gables, Fla. (Miami, Fla.)
Fullerton, Calif. (Cal State Fullerton)
Hattiesburg, Miss. (Southern Miss)
Houston, Texas (Rice)
Lincoln, Neb. (Nebraska)
Long Beach, Calif. (Long Beach State)
Palo Alto, Calif. (Stanford)
Starkville, Miss. (Mississippi State)
Tallahassee, Fla. (Florida State)
Tempe, Ariz. (Arizona State)
Wilson, N.C. (North Carolina State)