OMAHA, Neb. — LSU plays its first game in the College World Series under coach Smoke Laval on Friday night at 6 p.m. when the second-seeded Fighting Tigers face seventh-seeded Cal St. Fullerton at Rosenblatt Stadium in the only first-round matchup of nationally seeded teams.
The game will be televised nationally by ESPN2, with Mike Patrick (play-by-play), Harold Reynolds (analyst) and Dave Ryan (roving reporter) calling the action. The game will be broadcast throughout Louisiana by the LSU Sports Network, with live audio available on the Internet at www.lsusports.net.
Live statistics, recaps, quotes and boxscores from all CWS games will be available online at www.ncaasports.com.
LSU (45-20-1) is making its 12th appearance in the CWS since 1986, and first under second-year coach Laval after Hall of Fame coach Skip Bertman took the Tigers to Omaha 11 times in 15 years between 1986 and 2000. The Tigers own a 29-13 all-time mark in the CWS and won the national championship five times (1991, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 2000) in a 10-year span.
“It’s great to be here, because the city of Omaha puts on a great show,” Laval said. “I left LSU in 1993, and the sights, the smells and the sounds of Rosenblatt Stadium are still all familiar.”
Laval was Bertman’s top assistant from 1984 through 1993 before spending seven seasons as head coach at Louisiana-Monroe.
“I was glad I was with Skip for those 10 years, but I’m not trying to follow him, because I can’t be coach Bertman,” Laval said. “But as the years unfolded, the foundation was laid, so my whole goal was to be fair to the fans and the university and add on to the foundation we started in 1983.”
The Tigers (No. 4 Collegiate Baseball, No. 5 Baseball America) won the Southeastern Conference regular season championship for the first time since 1997, and after sweeping Northeastern, Tulane and UNC Wilmington in the Baton Rouge regional, defeated Baylor in the super regional last weekend at Alex Box Stadium, two games to one, winning 6-5 and 20-5 after dropping the first game 4-1.
“This young club has overcome a lot of obstacles, with the death of Wally Pontiff and some pitching injuries,” Laval said. “But this club has never looked back, never transferred the blame, and it’s great to be one of eight clubs representing college baseball in this tournament.”
LSU will start junior right-hander Nate Bumstead (11-3, 3.97) on the mound against the Titans. Bumstead, a second team All-SEC pitcher, was victimized by a lack of run support in the super regional opener, taking the loss despite giving up four runs on nine hits over eight innings.
“We’ve been working all year to get here, and now that we’re here, I’m excited,” Bumstead said. “We’re going to come out and play, and take things as they come.”
Leading the way for the Tigers at the plate is junior shortstop Aaron Hill, a California native who was the first round selection of the Toronto Blue Jays earlier this month in the Major League Baseball draft. Hill, a second team All-American, leads LSU in batting average (.368), runs scored (67), RBI (67) and on-base percentage (.475).
The Tigers’ hottest hitter in the NCAA tournament, though, is freshman catcher Matt Liuzza, who was 8-for-13 against Baylor in the super regional and is hitting an even .500 in six NCAA games.
The Titans (48-14) finished second to Long Beach St. in the Big West Conference, and after defeating San Diego and Notre Dame twice to win the Fullerton regional, they took two of three from Arizona St. in a super regional series, also at home, to reach the CWS for the 12th time and third time in the seven-year tenure of coach George Horton, a former Fullerton player and assistant coach who took over for Augie Garrido when Garrido left for Texas.
Fullerton (No. 2 Collegiate Baseball and Baseball America) began the season 15-1, including a three-game sweep of Stanford, and lost consecutive games only once this year, and that came in a three-game sweep at UC Riverside in early May.
“Our team got off to a great start, and we thought we were worthy of this trip because of the sweep of Stanford, which means you have a pretty good club,” Horton said. “I hope our team plays like they have all year, because when they do, we are a fun team to watch.
“It’s great to be back in Omaha, and I hope we play well like we have all year.”
The Titans, who boast a team ERA of 2.75, will start junior right-hander Jason Windsor (10-2, 1.82) on Friday. Windsor has walked just 18 batters in 84 innings this year and has yielded just three earned runs in his last 27 1/3 innings of work.
Laval got a look at the Titans in early March during the Tigers’ trip to Long Beach St. In the game that Laval witnessed, Fullerton defeated Texas, 14-4.
“At that time on that day, I thought Fullerton was as good a team as I saw,” Laval said. “They know the game, they’ve been here to Omaha, they’re well-coached, because it’s inbred in their program.
“Coach Horton’s teams have always come out and gotten after it.”
The Titans have hit just 34 home runs as a team, but are batting .333 on the year, and 10 players are hitting above .300. Leading the way is junior center fielder Shane Costa, a teammate of Hill’s in junior high school who is hitting .372 with a team high 28 stolen bases.
Other Fullerton threats include freshman left fielder Danny Dorn at .366 with a team high seven home runs and 54 RBI, and senior right fielder Kyle Boyer, who is hitting .342 with 24 stolen bases.
“I can’t really pay attention to the other team, but rather come out and do what I’ve done all year that got me here,” Bumstead said. “When I play, I worry the defense behind me, because I know my offense will take care of that part.”
LSU and Fullerton have split six all-time meetings, with the Titans winning the only CWS meeting, a 20-6 thrashing in a 1994 elimination game as the Tigers went 0-2 in Omaha for the only time.
The last time the teams met was in the 1998 South II Regional at Alex Box Stadium, with LSU taking 13-11 and 14-3 victories to advance to the CWS.
The 57th CWS gets underway on Friday at 1 p.m. when South Carolina (44-20) and Stanford (46-15) meet in the other bracket one contest.
Bracket two games begin on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. with Rice (53-11) taking on Southwest Missouri St. (40-24), followed by Miami of Florida (44-15-1) facing defending national champion Texas (48-18) at 6 p.m.
The winners of the four-team, double elimination brackets will meet in a best-of-three national championship series beginning on Saturday, June 21.