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| 6/19 | More Missed Opportunities Send LSU Home Early |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — Mason Katz, leading hopefully off first base, slumped to his knees when the third strike got past teammate Christian Ibarra. It was over. Two-and-done. 0-for-Omaha. Geaux ... home? Katz buried his head in his hands and just slumped there, motionless, as the North Carolina dugout poured out and past him to celebrate the Tar Heels’ 4-2 victory that eliminated LSU from the Tigers’ first College World Series trip in four years. It wasn’t supposed to end like this for LSU — the second team and the first national seed (No. 4) to be sent packing. Katz didn’t move for several moments. Continue... |
| 6/19 | Column: Omaha Tigers Never Showed Up |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — Let this be a lesson for LSU. It turns out you can’t just show up here in every four years or so and expect to waltz through the College World Series. The format keeps you almost a week whether you do anything or not. But the Tigers barely did a toe-tap in their first trip to TD Ameritrade Park before heading home after a 4-2 loss to North Carolina. The Tigers have defined Omaha and the CWS for much of the last two decades with six national championships. But when they show up with a team full of first-timers — LSU hadn’t been here since winning the 2009 CWS title — they look like any old rube visitor wandering in wide-eyed and ready to fall for anything. They might as well have been Stony Brook. Continue... |
| 6/19 | LSU Notes: A Game Of Inches |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — Here’s how close baseball can be. LSU starter Cody Glenn breezed through the first two batters he faced Tuesday before giving up a two-out single to Colin Moran, which brought Brian Holberton to the plate. Glenn worked the count 2-2, before Holberton took the fifth pitch. “We thought we had the kid struck out with two strikes, 2-2 pitch,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri, who let home plate umpire Steve Mattingly know his displeasure.. It was close. The crowd oohed. But it was ball three. “Didn’t get the call,” Mainieri said. “Then, boom, lays one in there, two-run homer on the next pitch.” Continue... |
| 6/18 | LSU's Survival Is In Cody Glenn's Hands |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — For much of the regular season, this was the game — LSU vs. North Carolina — that was begging to be played. Even here at the College World Series, it’s a pretty intriguing match-up. North Carolina is the No. 1 national seed. LSU is ranked No. 1 in the major polls. “No. 1 vs. No. 1, wow,” LSU coach Paul Manieri said. “Two teams with 57 wins? You don’t get that very often do you?” Just not now. Not under these circumstances. It seems too early. “It’s a shame it’s not for the national championship,” Mainieri said. Instead, it will be a lowly elimination game for the teams with the two best records in college baseball when the Tar Heels (57-11) and Tigers (57-10) play for their Omaha lives at 2 p.m. Continue... |
| 6/18 | Column: LSU Must Defy Own History Now |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — LSU has quite the storied history in the College World Series, of course, and the Tigers wear it on their sleeves, embracing it as enthusiastically as the locals here embrace them. But now, after losing their opener to UCLA 2-1, the Tigers will be battling their history, trying to overcome it and slay some demons, beginning with an elimination game against North Carolina today. LSU has those six national titles, two of the four walk-off national championships in CWS history. You think of LSU and Omaha, you think of delirious home plate celebrations and purple and gold dogpiles. But there’s another side to the story. Continue... |
| 6/18 | LSU Notes: Foster Doesn't Fall For UCLA Ploy |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — UCLA may have under-estimated their intended pigeon. One of the reasons the Bruins tried the age-old hidden ball trick in the ninth inning of Sunday night’s game, UCLA coach John Savage said, was that LSU had inserted a pinch-runner, Jared Foster, into the game. But the former Barbe High star wasn’t fooled when UCLA closer David Berg, the ball still tucked in his glove, made a wild throwing motion with his empty hand on a fake pick-off throw back toward second base. Continue... |
| 6/17 | Tigers Bobble Away CWS Opener To UCLA |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — Mark one up for small ball. Or just blame it on some uncharacteristically shaky defense by LSU. But two LSU errors led to both of UCLA’s unearned runs as the light-hitting but pesky Bruins edged the Tigers 2-1 in the final first round game of the College World Series. “We made a couple of misplays that cost us dearly,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “Had we made all the plays, they might not have scored all night. We really gift-wrapped the runs that they did score.” LSU starter Aaron Nola (12-1) probably deserved a better fate than his first loss of the season, although he had to pitch out of far more jams than his norm. UCLA, by hook or crook, got the leadoff runner on in the final six innings, but still needed the two errors to get any runs across. Continue... |
| 6/17 | LSU Notes: Mainieri Still Unsure Who Will Start Elimination Game |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — LSU will be the home team Tuesday when the Tigers face No. 1 seed North Carolina in an elimination game. The Tigers won a coin flip for the right, but after falling into the loser’s bracket with a 2-1 loss to UCLA, head coach Paul Mainieri still wasn’t sure who his starting pitcher for the second game will be. His options are No. 2 starter Ryan Eades, who has had control issues in his last two starts, or No. 3 man Cody Glenn, who hasn’t pitched since the SEC tournament after he was suspended for the regional and his spot in the rotation didn’t come up in a two-game sweep of Oklahoma in the super regional. Continue... |
| 6/16 | Rested Tigers Eager To Play |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — Yes, the same LSU team that won the super regional will finally take the field in the College World Series tonight. It only seems as if, since sweeping Oklahoma to clinch their berth here last Saturday, there’s been enough time for most of them to move on into post-collegiate pursuits. “It feels like forever,” said LSU first baseman Mason Katz as the No. 4 seed Tigers went through a final practice before taking the field tonight at 7 p.m. against UCLA, the last of the CWS’ four first-round games. “This week has gone by slow, so slow it’s unbelievable,” Katz continued. “We’ve been waiting for it to get to Sunday for so long. “We thought we were waiting for Saturday.” Continue... |
| 6/16 | Column: Missing Americana of Rosenblatt |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — Two years ago when this fine city cut the ribbon on brand new TD Ameritrade Park for its first College World Series, a local woman was quoted in the Omaha World-Herald. She waxed on at some length about the beauty of the new ball park, the amenities, the sight lines, the cleanliness and convenient parking, then she began gushing about the concessions, the comfy seat-backs, the wide concourses, the location and easy walking distance to the thriving downtown Old Market area. Summing up the wonder of it all, she said, “I hate it.” And I couldn’t have said it any better myself. But I’ll take a shot anyway. Continue... |
| 6/16 | Column: Meet The 2013 CWS Tigers |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — The winningest pre-Omaha team in LSU history runs the usual gamut from New Orleans to Naples, Fla., to somewhere in California, from future Major Leaguers to those whose life’s goal was realized when they became Tigers, from cut-ups to straight-and-narrows, all the while sporting an alarming number of shaggy mullet haircuts. But maybe you’re just now climbing on the Tigers bandwagon, a casual observer to a record-setting season, but ready at last to follow what tends to be a meandering saga through Omaha. It likely will be filled with ups and downs along with new twists and subplots as the College World Series soap opera unfolds. So you need to know the major players who, if everything goes according to plan, will be dominating Louisiana television sets over the next week and a half. Continue... |
| 6/16 | LSU NOTES: JaCoby Jones Back At Practice |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — LSU second baseman JaCoby Jones was back on the practice field Saturday after an illness sidelined him for a day, but head coach Paul Mainieri limited his work in preparation for tonight’s College World Series opener against UCLA. Jones took batting practice and some ground balls in limited work due to the flu-like symptoms that caused him to miss the workout Friday. “I think he’s OK,” Mainieri said. “It was good he was able to come out here today. I just didn’t want to go three or four days without doing anything. Continue... |
| 6/15 | Big Park May Fit Tigers Perfectly |
| | OMAHA, Neb. — It’s not quite true that none of LSU’s current players have ever competed in the shiny, new venue for the College World Series. First baseman Mason Katz was here at TD Ameritrade Park last July, taking part in the made-for-TV College Baseball Home Run Derby. “I remember that I crushed some balls,” Katz said Thursday as the Tigers as a whole got their first rehearsal in the ballpark. “Just crushed them ... and they didn’t get out of the park.” The home run is already on the endangered list in college baseball with the gentler bats. TD Ameritrade may just push it over the edge, extinct forever. As the Tigers took batting practice Friday, brisk incoming winds had the flags in centerfield pointing stiff toward home plate. Continue... |
| 6/14 | Column: Who Are These Guys? |
| | Granted, LSU has been away from the College World Series for a while, four whole years. But it must have seemed like the whole world had changed when the Tigers landed in Omaha Thursday morning. The CWS used to be a cozy little gathering where the usual old gang would get together every year, wonder which one of them missed the party this year, but mostly making sport of and snickering at the couple or three upstarts that might try to wander up unannounced and join the club. Hey the Tigers are back! But LSU must be walking around Omaha’s rustic Old Market area wondering where everybody went. Continue... |
| 6/12 | Column: No Omaha Experience, No Problem |
| | One of the well-known perks of going to Omaha as an LSU Tiger is that you have a ready-made fan base already in place. A lot of it actually is from back home, familiar faces from Alex Box Stadium who evacuate the state as if a land rush was on as soon as the Tigers punch their College World Series ticket. Many have come to enjoy the experience so much that they go every year whether the LSU team follows them or not. They have a certain reputation. Continue... |
| 6/11 | This Time LSU Excels On The Field Too |
| | Before LSU’s six-run ninth inning against Oklahoma Saturday night turned the waning moments into an early Omaha send-off, a mighty shot put a scare into the Tigers’ festive crowd. It looked for all the world like a comfortable 4-1 LSU lead had just been cut to a single run in the bottom of the seventh inning with a two-run home run waiting to happen. Then leftfielder Raph Rhymes went up the outfield wall and snatched the scary shot inches from the top of the fence. Alex Box Stadium simultaneously exploded and breathed a sigh of relief. “I think the ball actually found my glove,” Rhymes said afterwards. “I don’t know if I really caught it. I just kind of jumped and the ball landed in there.” Rhymes at least has a sense of humor. Head coach Paul Mainieri has said more than once that the Omaha-bound 2013 Tigers are the best defensive college team he’s ever seen. Continue... |
| 6/10 | Column: A Season Worthy Of An Early Dogpile |
| | BATON ROUGE — The dogpile has almost become too cliché in college baseball, so in that regard the one LSU fashioned out of relief and determination Saturday night at Alex Box Stadium was somewhat refreshing. This obligatory tangle of humanity was fairly mundane, although JaCoby Jones’ flying, 20-foot high-jump leap for the finale would get some style points in most precincts. Until then, it almost looked like a staged event, which in fact it was after LSU completed a two-game sweep of Oklahoma with an 11-1 victory. Far from spontaneous, it was almost awkward in the blooming stage, with a couple of the Tigers’ first responders looking at each for a moment before the construction finally commenced with almost forced smiles and staged glee as if they were waiting for directions. Continue... |
| 6/9 | Tigers Pile On To Clinch Trip To Omaha |
| | BATON ROUGE — LSU got a dog-pile worthy victory before the Tigers set their sights on an old, familiar destination Saturday night. An already record-breaking season will end where LSU seasons are supposed to end. There was the obligatory conga-line lap around Alex Box Stadium, high-fiving with another record crowd and getting the grand send off. “See you in Omaha!” read the poster behind the third base dugout. “Omaha-bound,” read the banner that senior Mason Katz held at the front of the line. And that’s where the Tigers are heading for the College World Series after scratching out runs early and piling them on late for an 11-1 victory over Oklahoma to sweep the NCAA Super Regional. “This team is special,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “I knew it even before the season started. Continue... |
| 6/8 | Nola Outduels Gray To Put LSU In Control |
| | BATON ROUGE — Advantage, Tigers. Near-perfection, Aaron Nola. And it came just when anything less might not have been enough for LSU. Nola pitched arguably his best game as a Tiger to out-duel Oklahoma ace Jonathan Gray and allow LSU time to finally solve the likely future Major Leaguer to beat Oklahoma 2-0 in the opener for the Super Regional Friday night. “Wow,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “Anybody that hasn’t been to Alex Box Stadium for a game like this needs to put it on their bucket list. You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced this with the crowd and the atmosphere.” Continue... |
| 6/8 | LSU Notes: Saturday Features Battle Of Second-Round Picks |
| | BATON ROUGE -— LSU won the pitching battle of first-round Major League draft picks — assuming Tiger coach Paul Mainieri is correct and Aaron Nola follows Oklahoma’s Jonathan Gray as an ultra-high pick when he’s eligible next year. “Now we get to see the second-round picks go at it,” Oklahoma coach Sunny Golloway said. “That’s pretty impressive after what we just saw.” That’s a fact. After Nola won the opener 2-0, LSU will start junior Ryan Eades tonight against Oklahoma lefthander Dillon Overton, both of whom were drafted Friday in the second round. “Hopefully he’s got that (draft) behind him and will sleep well tonight,” Golloway said. “Hopefully he slept well last night and will be ready to go.” An LSU win sends the Tigers to the College World Series. An Oklahoma win would force a third and deciding game on Sunday night. Continue... |
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