BATON ROUGE — LSU coach Paul Mainieri will receive the 2009 American Baseball Coaches Association National Coach of the Year award tonight in Dallas during the annual ABCA convention.
Mainieri is the second LSU coach to win the ABCA award, joining Skip Bertman, who was named National Coach of the Year in 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 2000.
Mainieri earned four National Coach of the Year designations after directing LSU to the 2009 NCAA championship. He was also honored by Collegiate Baseball newspaper, Baseball America magazine and Rivals.com.
Mainieri’s 2009 national championship club completed the season with a 56-17 record, marking the second-highest wins total in LSU history. The CWS title was the sixth for LSU and its first since 2000, when Bertman led the Tigers to their fifth NCAA championship.
The ’09 Tigers, who began the year ranked No. 1 in the nation, culminated the season with a 2-1 series victory over Texas in the CWS Championship Finals. LSU also captured the SEC regular-season title – the school’s first since 2003 — and won the league tournament for the second year in a row.
Mainieri has a 134-62-2 (.682) record in three seasons at LSU, including the ’09 national championship, two CWS appearances, one SEC regular-season title, two SEC Tournament titles and two SEC Western Division crowns.
He has a 998-554-6 (.642) career record in 27 collegiate seasons, including tenures at St. Thomas (Fla.), Air Force, Notre Dame and LSU.
Mainieri guided LSU to an SEC-record 23-game win streak near the end of the 2008 season, as the Tigers won 26 of their final 29 games. LSU won 28 of its final 33 games in 2009, including a 14-game win streak during the postseason.
Since April 22, 2008, LSU has a remarkable 82-20 (.804) record under Mainieri.