BATON ROUGE, La. – The last of the six college baseball preseason polls has been released, and LSU is No. 3 in the 2017 National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association ranking.
LSU is a consensus Top 5 in the preseason polls, as the Tigers are ranked No. 2 by Collegiate Baseball and by Perfect Game, No 3. by USA Today and by the NCBWA, No. 4 by Baseball America, and No. 5 by D1 Baseball.
LSU is one of four Southeastern Conference teams appearing in the 2017 NCBWA preseason Top 10, along with No. 2 Florida, No. 5 South Carolina and No. 6 Vanderbilt. Other SEC teams among the NCBWA Top 35 are No. 20 Texas A&M, No. 27 Ole Miss and No.32 Mississippi State.
TCU, which LSU will face on March 3 at Minute Maid Park in Houston, is No. 1 in the NCBWA poll. LSU’s other non-conference opponents appearing in the poll are No. 15 Louisiana-Lafayette, No. 17 Texas Tech, No. 25 Maryland and No. 33 Tulane.
See the entire 2017 NCBWA poll here.
The NCBWA also released its preseason All-America team, naming LSU junior pitcher Alex Lange to the second team. Lange, a first-team All-American as a freshman in 2015, started 17 games last season as a sophomore, posting an 8-4 mark and a 3.79 ERA in 111.2 innings with 49 walks and 125 strikeouts while limiting opponents to a .226 batting average. He finished No. 2 in the SEC in innings pitched and No. 4 in the league in strikeouts.
Lange, who was 12-0 in his freshman year, enters this season with a 20-4 career mark at LSU. He has worked 225.2 innings in 34 starts through two seasons, posting a 2.87 ERA and 256 strikeouts.
Lange was also a member of the 2016 SEC Academic Honor Roll as a marketing major.
LSU opens the 2017 season at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 17 when the Tigers play host to Air Force in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field.