LSU’s baseball team got a day of rest and relaxation Friday, a respite earned by winning its first two games in the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
What it did not give the Tigers was any margin for error.
When they return to Metropolitan Stadium in Hoover, Alabama, for today’s noon semifinal game, they’ll find the tournament has morphed into single elimination.
So despite being 2-0 and one win from the tournament final, LSU is also one loss from going home.
It’s a quirk in a bracket that starts with a dozen teams with five days to whittle them down. It’s a format LSU head coach Paul Mainieri and the other coaches signed off on.
Not that it really matters in the big picture for LSU.
If there was any doubt, Thursday’s late-late night 10-0 victory over Kentucky surely sewed up one of the coveted top eight national seeds for the Tigers (41-17) in next week’s NCAA Tournament.
They’ll get South Carolina after the Gamecocks eliminated Kentucky 3-1 in Friday’s action.
Florida will play Friday’s Arkansas-Mississippi State winner in the other semifinal.
It’s the fifth consecutive year LSU has reached the semifinals.
“There’s never any guarantees,” Mainieri said.
But LSU could not have set it up much better.
The bullpen handled Wednesday’s win over Missouri by committee and Alex Lange threw a seven-inning, complete-game shutout Thursday night against the Wildcats.
So LSU has its regular second and third weekend starting pitchers available with the potential of two more games to play.
Senior left-hander Jared Poch? (9-3, 3.40 ERA) will start today.
He should be able to count on some run support.
The Tigers have scored 10 or more runs in four consecutive SEC games for the first time the 2000 season, the last of former coach Skip Bertman’s five national championships.
They put a 10-spot up on Kentucky’s Sean Hjelle, the SEC Pitcher of the Year who had not given up more than four in any game this season.
“What we did was pretty special because that guy is legit,” said LSU shortstop Kramer Robertson, who drove in four runs and capped a five-run fifth inning with a three-run homer that brought the mercy rule into effect after seven innings.
Every Tiger starter had at least one of LSU’s 12 hits.
“We’re just confident as a ballclub and we want to keep it rolling,” Robertson said. “This is the time you want to be playing your best baseball, and I feel like we’re almost there. (But) our best baseball is still in front of us.”
Meanwhile Lange (8-5) moved ahead of Ben McDonald for second place all-time among LSU’s career strikeout leaders. He had seven against the Wildcats and did not allow a walk in his seven innings.
“That’s who he is,” Robertson said. “He’s one of the best pitcher the country.”
It was the first time Kentucky, statistically the SEC’s best offense, was shut out this season.
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