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| Scooter Hobbs Archive |
| 5/31 | Tigers Rally Late To Whip Lions |
| | BATON ROUGE — Small ball, long ball, LSU didn’t seem to care much Friday. But mostly it was the errant balls tossed indiscriminately by Southeastern Louisiana that helped the Tigers overcome a late deficit and beat the Lions 8-4 in the opening game of the Baton Rouge Regional at Alex Box Stadium/Skip Bertman Field. LSU had 14 hits, but made better use of three throwing errors and two wild pitches by the Lions to overcome a 4-2 Southeastern lead and advance in the winners’ bracket. “We had to just grind this one out,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said after the Tigers’ ninth straight victory. “At times it wasn’t pretty, but we did what it took to win. I don’t think we played poorly. I give more credit to their pitcher (Andro Cutura). “He did a great job.” Continue... |
| 5/30 | Column: Mainieri's Best Coaching Job Has LSU In Familiar Spot |
| | Watching LSU in the SEC tournament last week, I was thinking the same thing, but maybe it’s better if you hear it from Skip Bertman. He was talking, as he is prone to do, about LSU baseball, specifically head coach Paul Mainieri. “This is his best coaching job,” Bertman said this week. Pretty good recommendation. Hard to argue. None of it will mean much if LSU doesn’t end up in Omaha for the College World Series — right or wrong, that’s how LSU seasons are forever judged. And there are no guarantees. Remember 2012? You never know when a Stony Brook might happen. Continue... |
| 5/30 | Tigers Will Send Poche Out For Opener |
| | In the end, LSU’s Paul Mainieri slapped himself in the forehead and told himself to quit overthinking the situation. So of course he’s going to send a freshman to the mound to open LSU’s quest for Omaha when the Baton Rouge regional opens today with the Tigers playing Southeastern Louisiana at Alex Box Stadium/Skip Bertman Field. And of course Aaron Nola will be there to pitch in what, one way or the other, is typically the pivotal second game for the Tigers. “Sorry for keeping you on the edge of your seats all week,” Mainieri said Thursday as the Tigers went through a final workout before the NCAA tournament. The Tigers actually started grooming Poché for this role three weeks ago when he pitched the opening game of the final regular season series against Auburn. He also led off on the mound for the Tigers in last week’s SEC tournament. Continue... |
| 5/28 | Column: New SEC Network Not Necessarily Improved Viewing |
| | This would have been back in the early 1990s, when Louisiana was just becoming enamored with college baseball, still a bit of a novelty to the rest of the country. There was an NCAA regional going on at the old Alex Box Stadium and drawing a lot of interest. Ronnie Rantz, a former Tiger pitcher, was just starting his fledgling “Jumbo Network” that showed an occasional LSU baseball game. While flipping through the NCAA manual that spelled out policy and intricate details for the running of the regional, Rantz discovered something interesting. The NCAA television rights fee was clearly spelled out as “$250 per game.” No further zeros needed. Anybody could ante up the $250 and televise a tournament game. Continue... |
| 5/25 | Column: Who Are These Guys, And Why Are They Beating Up On The SEC? |
| | LSU has been hitting the ball Gorilla hard for almost three weeks now, but Saturday’s crushing and equally convincing 11-1 win over Arkansas in the SEC tournament semifinals left a bruise. Ouch. That had to hurt. It was just a routine pop fly. Tiger third baseman Christian Ibarra didn’t hit it. He didn’t even catch it. But he eyed it. Almost literally. Continue... |
| 5/12 | Weekend Hopes Washed Away For LSU |
| | BATON ROUGE — Mother Nature finally made LSU and Alabama say “Uncle” Sunday. Thus, with both teams desperately needing a victory, they both got a big, fat nothing after a four-hour wait proved fruitless and the deciding game of the SEC series was finally cancelled due to persistent rain and lightning in the area around Alex Box Stadium. It won’t be made up. The Sunday washout followed Friday’s game being postponed into a Saturday doubleheader, with the second game of that delayed another three hours before Alabama evened the series with a 5-1 victory well after midnight. The two teams never even took the field Sunday — the first SEC game this season that did not get played and the first time it has happened to LSU in 14 years. Continue... |
| 5/11 | Column: Mettenberger Deserved Better |
| | BATON ROUGE — Evidently, the NFL takes its “diluted urine” samples seriously. Or perhaps, unlike those of us whose formal medical training was in something other than spinal cords, the general managers are familiar with the term “spondylolysis.” I thought the latter meant “bad breath,” which surely wouldn’t be a first in the NFL trenches. The first one was also a new one on me. But apparently both had something to do with why former LSU quarterback Zach Mettenberger, the best pure arm in this year’s NFL draft, was twiddling his very healthy thumbs until the second pick of the sixth round on Saturday. Mettenberger has been diagnosed with both ailments. He may have been a victim of the draft being pushed back into May, as both variables came to light in the last two weeks. Continue... |
| 5/4 | Foster's Catch A Product Of Mainieri's System |
| | A few weeks ago somebody asked me why LSU coach Paul Mainieri “gives up on people like that.” I thought it was an odd accusation. Totally unfounded. In fact, I was dumbfounded by it, which isn’t unusual but still ... LSU baseball players may lose their starting jobs. They may temporarily fall out of favor. They can struggle and they might blow chances and they might tease Mainieri with potential to no avail. But as long as they’ve got a legal uniform on, they’ve got about as good of a chance as any of the stars on the team to be the night’s Designated Hero. Continue... |
| 4/17 | Tigers Must Conquer Road Woes At Ole Miss |
| | At some point, assuming it wishes to stay in the Southeastern Conference championship race, LSU is going to have to win some on the road this season. It hasn’t been easy. Not for the Tigers. Not for anybody in the SEC. “It’s crucial,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “Three of our last five SEC series are on the road.” LSU (28-9-1, 8-6-1 SEC) will have quite a challenge when it gets a head start on the weekend by traveling to Ole Miss (29-9, 9-6) for a series beginning with tonight’s nationally televised game on ESPNU. Continue... |
| 4/17 | Column: Tigers Will Have To Hit Their Way Through Jumbled SEC |
| | So here we are at the halfway mark of the Southeastern Conference baseball race, which means we’re almost halfway to that point where you start trying to remember, a week later, who was it, anyway, who won that thing. Honestly, does it matter? Not really, although there is a nice parting gift for the winner. Probably a chafing dish or something. But when it comes to SEC baseball, face it, it’s not really about who finishes FIRST in the league’s final standings. It’s about who’s the LAST man standing in postseason, presumably in Omaha, preferably with more memorable hardware. But what happens over the next five weeks in the SEC race surely matters. It will have a lot to do with sorting things out for the postseason where it really matters. Call it jockeying for position — earning the right to host a regional, a super regional, pave the road to Omaha. Continue... |
| 4/13 | Excuse Me, Tigers Get Polite Walk-Off Win Over Hogs |
| | BATON ROUGE — LSU had been pretty generous all afternoon. So it only made sense that the Tigers would come up with a game-winning hit that almost seemed designed not to offend the visiting Arkansas Razorbacks. “It doesn’t matter how,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. So Mark Laird, facing a two-out, 3-2 count, reached out and poked the most polite walk-off single you ever saw to give the Tigers a 5-4 victory over the Razorbacks. Laird’s little flair nestled into no-man’s land down the third base line to easily score pinch-runner Jake Fraley for LSU’s seventh-straight win and clinch the SEC weekend series. Continue... |
| 4/13 | Column: LSU — Really — Plans To Get Tight Ends More Involved |
| | BATON ROUGE — By all accounts LSU football will welcome back an old but long-lost friend to the offense this fall. He looks vaguely familiar. A little bulky, perhaps, to be catching all those passes downfield. Still blocking, of course, but not necessarily as a full-time job. Could it be? OK, LSU has threatened this before, and the springtime, when most anything grand and glorious seems possible, is the usual spot for the annual big tease. But this time the Tigers say they really, really mean it. No kidding. Tight ends will be back in fashion. Continue... |
| 4/6 | Column: Yes, Sir, LSU Has A Real Quarterback Competition |
| | BATON ROUGE — LSU’s spring football game was long on oohs and short on aahs. You know the oooohs — oooh, ALMOST a great catch, just off the fingertips. And the rare aaaahs — ah, YEAH, that’s the way it’s done. Mostly the former. So there was basically a whole lot of teasing going on here in Tiger Stadium Saturday for this annual exhibition. Including the big tease. Apparently next year — with a new quarterback no matter which young shaver wins the job, and with a whole fleet of new receivers, many of whom aren’t even on campus yet — LSU apparently plans to throw as deep as possible on about every other play, if not more. Either this spring folly was Les Miles’ mid-life crisis or just more teasing with the long bomb before warming back up to ball-control and the comfortable toss sweep. Continue... |
| 4/6 | Spring Game Suggests Different Offense To Come |
| | BATON ROUGE — If LSU’s spring football game suggested anything Saturday, it’s that fullbacks and tight ends are suddenly back in fashion, the quarterback race might actually get interesting and the Tigers are waiting anxiously on the next freshmen crop of wide receivers. For the record the White team, which had more of the offensive starters while Anthony Jennings and Brandon Harris alternated quarterbacking the two teams, won the game 42-14 to conclude LSU’s spring workouts. “I think the spring game went as it should have,” LSU coach Les Miles said. “It was a very productive day.” Continue... |
| 3/23 | Poche Wins Classic Battle Of Freshmen |
| | BATON ROUGE — LSU coach Paul Mainieri called it the “evolution of an SEC pitcher” right before his eyes. Probably two of them. But in a battle of true freshmen, LSU lefthander Jared Poche out-dueled Georgia’s Robert Tyler and the Tigers scratched out a 2-1 victory over the Bulldogs to clinch the weekend series. “Whew,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “Was that something?” Poche took a no-hitter into the sixth inning and came within an out of a finishing a complete-game 3-hitter. Not bad for a guy who said that his pregame warm-up made him think “It was going to be my worst outing ever. I couldn’t throw a strike.” Then came the evolution. Continue... |
| 3/19 | LSU Will Fight NIT History At San Francisco |
| | LSU basketball has never had much luck in the NIT, and the current Tigers haven’t fared very well on the road this season. So why bother with a trip to San Francisco? “It signifies we’re making some positive steps,” second-year coach Johnny Jones said. “We have underclassmen having an opportunity to continue playing into the postseason. We want to put our best foot forward.” So LSU (19-13) packed its bags for California, where they’ll face the San Francisco Dons (21-11) in the NIT’s opening round tonight at 9 p.m. on ESPNU. LSU is a No. 5 seed while San Francisco is a No. 4. Continue... |
| 3/19 | Column: Nothing Like An Easy Billion Dollars |
| | The other night I was lounging around, too lazy to reach for the TV clicker, so I was listening to one of those infomercial slick talkers explain how you — well, me, actually, apparently — could eventually make millions of dollars by doing ... nothing, best I could tell. I gathered that you needed to buy the book he was hawking — it was nice that he said he made no profit on it, just enough to cover printing and shipping — with some ridiculously easy steps that will surely make you slap yourself straight in the forehead for not thinking of them first. Continue... |
| 2/16 | Column: Don't Be Too Hasty To Slow The Game Down |
| | Whoa there, football coaches. Put your hands up, nice and slow, step away from the rule book, and let’s talk about this for a minute. It appears the old guard is trying to pull a slick one here in getting a new college game rule slipped in. They may even be right. But they’re moving too fast in their effort to slow the game down. If you missed it, the NCAA Rules Committee has proposed a change in the game whereas offenses will be required to wait until at least 10 seconds have ticked off the 40-second play clock before snapping the ball for play. The only exception would be the final two minutes of each half, when obviously sometimes you just don’t have that luxury. The irony is that offenses that snap the ball too quickly will be flagged for ... delay of game. So at least they have a sense of humor. Continue... |
| 2/7 | Column: Be Careful What You Promise In Recruiting |
| | Les Miles has a short memory, apparently never quite learns. There’s no stopping him. Does he not remember just about a month ago when he stood there like a lonely parent watching his offense and half his defensive line disappear before his very eyes. Did he not see them run away from school, lured away from the home and hearth of the Tiger family by the lure of the NFL carpetbaggers? Does he not remember the pain of watching them leave with full-blown eligibility remaining. No, he just reloads with glee — with that short memory flying off the handle. Continue... |
| 2/2 | Tigers Make Followup Statement With Big Win Over Hogs |
| | BATON ROUGE — Fans are suddenly starting to pay attention to Johnny Jones’ LSU basketball team. Spurred on by Tuesday’s upset of Kentucky — when most supporters couldn’t make it due to a winter storm — the biggest actual crowd since 2009 showed up Saturday to see if it was a fluke. The 10,925 curious weren’t disappointed. It wasn’t. LSU jumped on Arkansas early, didn’t quite deliver the knockout in the middle but answered the Razorbacks late for the Tigers’ second straight wire-to-wire victory, 88-74. Continue... |
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