BATON ROUGE — With the first half of the 2003 Southeastern Conference baseball season almost complete, LSU seeks to stay in strong contention for the league championship this weekend when the Fighting Tigers host West division rival Ole Miss in a three-game series at Alex Box Stadium.
The series gets underway on Friday night at 7 p.m., a start time 30 minutes later than the traditional start time of 6:30 p.m. The change was made to allow fans to attend the LSU spring football game at 5 p.m. in Tiger Stadium. Games two and three of the series will be at the usual starting times of 2 p.m. on Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday.
All three games of the series will be broadcast by the full LSU Sports Network (WDGL-98.1 FM), with live audio, video and statistics available on the Internet at www.lsusports.net. Sunday’s game will be televised live in Louisiana on the Louisiana Sports Network (cable channel 10 in Baton Rouge) and will be available in other markets on Comcast Sports Southeast.
LSU (22-10-1, 9-2-1) enters the weekend just percentage points behind league leader Mississippi State, which is 9-2 in conference play. Auburn, which is just a half-game behind the Bulldogs at 9-3, visits Starkville for a critical three-game series this weekend.
LSU enters the series having won its last eight SEC series, and took two of three from defending conference champion South Carolina last weekend.
The Tigers (No. 8 Collegiate Baseball, No. 11 Baseball America, No. 13 ESPN/USA Today) have won three in a row and six of their last seven, including a 6-4 victory at Northwestern State on Wednesday that featured a four-run eighth inning to overcome a four-run deficit, along with 3 2/3 scoreless innings of relief by Jason Determann to pick up the win.
The big hit in the rally was delivered by junior shortstop Aaron Hill, who broke a 4-4 tie with a two-run double. Hill, the Tigers’ leading hitter on the year at .368, is 9-for-12 with nine RBI in his last three games, and leads the SEC in on-base percentage (.503), walks (27) and triples (4).
Hill also added a home run on Wednesday, giving the Tigers at least one home run in 13 consecutive games, LSU’s longest streak since a 21-game stretch with a home run in March of 1998.
LSU coach Smoke Laval, who will coach his 100th game as the Tigers’ skipper and his 500th career game as a head coach on Friday, will stick with the same pitching rotation he used last weekend in the South Carolina series.
First up will be freshman right-hander Justin Meier (4-0, 1.38), who is fourth in the SEC in ERA and pitched a complete game in his first career SEC start last Friday, and Meier will be followed by senior right-hander Bo Pettit (5-1, 3.92) on Saturday and junior right-hander Nate Bumstead (4-1, 5.13) on Sunday. Bumstead also pitched his first career complete game on Sunday vs. the Gamecocks.
Ole Miss (20-12, 7-5) has won three of its four SEC series, but a three-game sweep by Mississippi State in Oxford has the Rebels two and a half games behind their in-state rivals entering this weekend. Ole Miss won two of three last weekend at Tennessee, but comes to Baton Rouge on the heels of an 8-2 loss to Southern Miss in Hattiesburg on Wednesday.
The Rebels’ strength lies in its pitching staff, as evidenced by its 2.66 ERA, second in the SEC only to Mississippi State’s 2.45 mark, and the fact Ole Miss has given up just seven home runs in 32 games. However, the Rebels will play the remainder of the season without its top pitcher, sophomore right-hander Alan Horne, who underwent Tommy John surgery on Thursday to repair a damaged ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm.
Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco will start senior right-hander T.J. Beam (4-1, 2.03) on Friday and follow him with a pair of true freshmen in right-hander Mark Holliman (3-2, 2.19) on Saturday and left-hander Eric Fowler (1-1, 3.53) on Sunday.
The Rebels’ hitters have struggled this season, batting just .275 on the season, 10th in the 12-team SEC. However, Ole Miss possesses a dangerous batter in freshman first baseman Stephen Head, who was named the SEC Player of the Week last week and comes in with a .372 batting average. Sophomore outfielder Seth Smith, the 2002 SEC Freshman of the Year, is batting .330 but has collected just 16 RBI.
Ole Miss comes to Baton Rouge not having won a series at Alex Box Stadium since 1982, when former Rebel football and baseball All-American Jake Gibbs was their coach and Jack Lamabe was the Tigers’ coach. In the last 20 years, LSU has won 11 straight series over Ole Miss at home and is 29-5 overall.
The Rebels won two of three last year in Oxford, their fourth series win over LSU since 1984, but the Tigers still hold a 148-126 all-time lead.
Bianco is a former catcher at LSU (1988-89) who later returned to his alma mater to serve as an assistant to legendary Tiger coach Skip Bertman from 1993 through 1997, and was part of three national championship teams in 1993, 1996 and 1997. Bianco is 5-8 vs. LSU in his coaching career, 3-5 at Ole Miss and 2-2 in three seasons at McNeese St.
LSU is back at home on Tuesday night when it faces longtime archirval Tulane in the renewal of the oldest intercollegiate athletic rivalry for both schools. The Tigers are on the road Easter weekend to face SEC East foe Vanderbilt.