An LSU baseball team has had better prospects entering the NCAA tournament.
A 1-2 showing in the Southeastern Conference tournament that ended with a pair of discouraging losses, coupled with some injury issues, is not a recipe for success once the NCAA rolls around.
Except when it doesn’t matter. Except when a team like the 1996 LSU Tigers overcome a sour SEC tournament and injury to a key player like Warren Morris, whom fate makes the hero in the College World Series championship game against Miami.
Baseball is weird. College baseball, doubly so.
It’s a sport where the hardest-hit ball can be an out and the weakest nubber can get through for a triple, where a No. 4 regional seed can rise to win the College World Series, like Fresno State in 2008. It’s a sport where a team can be the last at-large pick in the NCAA field and end up the last one standing, like Ole Miss last year.
The beauty of baseball is that virtually anything is possible. Keep hitting, keep sending batters to the plate and the game, theoretically, will never end.
All that said, all the history and happenstance, the way this LSU baseball team heads into this year’s NCAA tournament is far from ideal. The Tigers were named as a regional host on Sunday. The only other sure thing when the NCAA bids and regional assignments are finalized Monday morning (11 a.m., ESPN2) is that 43-15 LSU will be an all-important top-eight national seed.
After that, it’s anyone’s guess (I might have said all bets are off, but then there’s that still expanding Alabama baseball scandal). The last time all eight national seeds made it to the super regional round was 2008. That means when the game of baseball musical chairs stops at least one of the big boys, a team that should possess everything it takes to win in Omaha, will likely be without a seat.
LSU, vulnerably, looks like it could be that team this year for several reasons. One, All-American pitcher Paul Skenes is coming off his most pedestrian-looking start of the season, a 3 2/3 innings effort in a 5-4 loss Thursday when he allowed five runs (just two earned) and struck out only three. Against Texas A&M the following day, the Tigers were anemic with runners in scoring position (3-for-20) in another 5-4 loss. Some quality research by our LSU baseball beat writer Leah Vann shows the Tigers have had a weakness against left-handed pitching, a weakness both Arkansas and A&M exploited in Hoover.
And what of heavy-hitting third baseman Tommy White? Coach Jay Johnson said White needed a day off Friday and didn’t even try to put him in the lineup as a pinch-hitter against the Aggies. Johnson said late in the regular season that White was beat up from the long grind, but is it something more than that?
All will be revealed Friday when LSU opens regional play against some team the Tigers are supposed to beat. It has come down to this for the Tigers. Just short of an SEC regular-season championship (arguably because South Carolina chose a rain out over playing LSU in Columbia in April), well short of an SEC tournament title. Any and all disappointments will be erased if the Tigers can get to Omaha (winning there is yet another game of chance), but LSU has to do something. There is too much talent on this team, a team led by what is expected to be the top two picks in the major league draft in center fielder Dylan Crews and Skenes to not get there.
Maybe the Tigers can cover all the bases. Maybe the SEC tournament was just an aberration, as it has been in the past. Five LSU teams have gone 1-2 or worse in the SEC tournament and still reached the CWS.
But there’s no disputing the fact that LSU is 7-7 in its past 14 games since dropping its first of back-to-back SEC series at Auburn. That series loss, coupled with the one to Mississippi State and including a 1-2 showing in Hoover means LSU has essentially lost the weekend three of the past four weeks. That’s not a trend any of LSU’s rabid baseball faithful want to see.
It all can change, like in the flash of Warren Morris’ bat — or in this case the bat of Crews or White or Tre' Morgan, whose defensive wizardry alone is enough to want to see the Tigers keep playing. Or it could all be over quite quickly.
The NCAA tournament is here. Time for LSU to be the team it has been expected to be since last summer or be that team that doesn’t match the hype.