BATON ROUGE — One of the three Southeastern Conference teams to defeat LSU during the conference schedule will be seventh-ranked LSU’s opening round opponent in the 2000 SEC Softball Tournament Thursday in Columbus, Ga.
The Tigers, winners of the SEC regular season title for the second consecutive year and the SEC Western Division champion for the fourth straight time, will play the final game of the first day of the tournament at South Commons Stadium against Auburn, the number eight seed. The game is scheduled for 7 p.m. CDT.
Auburn defeated LSU, 2-1, in the second game of the four-game league series back on March 17 in Tiger Park.
LSU, which won the title by taking two of four games this past weekend at Alabama, will enter the tournament with a 53-10 record and a 26-4 conference mark.
Auburn finished the season with a 34-29 overall record and a 10-19 mark in the SEC.
Arkansas (40-27, 19-11), the fourth seed, and Mississippi State (41-23, 17-13), the fifth seed, are the other two teams in LSU’s bracket and will play the 5 p.m. game on Thursday to open the night session of day one.
In the other half of the bracket, Kentucky is the number two seed by virtue of winning the East. The Lady Kats make their first SEC Tournament appearance ever with a 36-27 overall mark and a 15-13 SEC record. The Kats meet seventh-seed South Carolina (35-25, 11-16) at 1 p.m.
The 11 a.m. tournament opener will match third-seeded Alabama (59-10, 25-5) against sixth-seeded Florida (43-26, 13-14).
LSU will play either the winner or loser of the Arkansas-Mississippi State game on Friday in the double bracket double elimination event. If LSU wins, it will play at 7 p.m. CDT on Friday, while the Tigers will play at 1 p.m. if it loses to Auburn on Thursday evening.
The Saturday games in the tournament will be televised on College Sports Southeast with the Noon championship game on Sunday to be shown on Fox Sports Net. All LSU games will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Network (107.3 FM in the Baton Rouge area) and on the internet at www.LSUsports.net.