BATON ROUGE — LSU begins the quest for its 12th trip to the College World Series today at 2 p.m. when the top-seeded Fighting Tigers host cross-town rival and fourth-seeded Southern in the opening game of the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional at Alex Box Stadium.
Tonight’s second game will feature another pair of Louisiana rivals in second-seeded Louisiana-Lafayette (37-21) and third-seeded Tulane (35-25). That game is scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
The game, and all LSU games in the NCAA Tournament, can be heard on the full LSU Sports Network (WDGL-98.1 FM in Baton Rouge, WWL-870 AM in New Orleans) and on the Internet at www.lsusports.net.
The Pelican Sports Network will also televise all games of the Baton Rouge regional live in selected markets throughout Louisiana; check local listings for the station in your area. The LSU-Southern game will be broadcast in Baton Rouge on WGMB-Fox 44.
The Tigers have a 37-1 all-time series edge over Southern, including a 13-2 victory on April 16 at The Box and a 6-3 victory in an elimination game of the 1999 Baton Rouge regional. The Jaguars’ lone series victory was an 11-6 triumph on March 6, 2001.
LSU (40-19) enters the regional ranked 10th by Baseball America, 11th by Collegiate Baseball and 14th by ESPN/Baseball Weekly, but lost two games last Saturday to South Carolina to finish third at the Southeastern Conference tournament in Birmingham.
The Tigers will start sophomore right-hander Brian Wilson (9-4, 3.70) against the Jaguars. Wilson has won his last two starts, including an 8-3 victory last Thursday vs. South Carolina at the SEC Tournament, when he gave up two earned runs over seven-plus innings. Wilson, however, is the only LSU pitcher to ever lose to Southern, giving up four runs on seven hits in 4 2/3 innings.
Southern (45-8) is in its third regional in the last four years after winning the SWAC regular season and tournament championships. The Jaguars lost two games in last year’s New Orleans regional to Tulane and Ole Miss, but are the only historically black college to win an NCAA baseball tournament game, beating Cal St. Fullerton in 1987 and Louisiana-Monroe in 1999, a team that was coached by current LSU skipper Smoke Laval.
The Jaguars will start senior right-hander Josef Rankin (8-0, 4.44) on the mound today. Southern’s most dangerous hitter is sophomore second baseman Rickie Weeks (.500-19-92), a Team USA member who enters with a slugging percentage of an even 1.000.
LSU is 2-3 against the Baton Rouge regional field, but 22-13 against all teams in this year’s field of 64. The Tigers lost twice to UL-Lafayette (2-1 at home on March 12 and 7-0 at Lafayette on March 19), and split two meetings with Tulane (losing 6-5 at home on March 5 and winning 9-5 at the Superdome on April 10).
The losers of today’s games will begin play Saturday with an elimination game Saturday at 11 a.m., followed by the winners of today’s games at 3 p.m. The loser of the second game and the winner of the first game meet in an elimination game Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
The championship round will begin Sunday at 1 p.m., and a second game, if necessary, would start at approximately 5 p.m. The winner of the Baton Rouge regional advances to face the winner of the Houston regional (Rice, Texas Tech, Washington and Harvard) in a best-of-three super regional June 7-9.