After LSU exited the SEC tournament this past weekend, Tigers’ head coach Jay Johnson figured out his team’s opponent for Friday’s NCAA tournament opener in the Baton Rouge Regional.
“You see who’s (a likely) No. 4 seed within 400 miles (from Baton Rouge), so we knew it was going to be Nicholls,” Johnson said. “I actually told the team in Hoover `we’re playing Nicholls' having no idea what’s going on in the AAC tournament.”
What transpired in the American Athletic Conference tourney in Clearwater, Fla. was inspired play from Tulane. The Green Wave, who entered the tourney having lost seven straight league series, won four of five games including an 8-6 victory in the championship game over AAC regular season East Carolina to win an NCAA tournament automatic bid.
On Monday when the NCAA announced the tourney brackets, it expectedly rewarded LSU with a No. 5 overall national seed to give the Tigers homefield advantage if they advance to the Super Regional.
Then, the NCAA tournament selection committee dropped the bombshell as the entire LSU team gathered in the Champions Club watching the NCAA bracket reveal on ESPN.
There was an audible gasp of disbelief from the Tigers when the Tuscaloosa bracket hosted by Alabama was revealed with Southland Conference regular season and tournament champion Nicholls State set to play the Crimson Tide.
Moments later when the Baton Rouge bracket was announced matching LSU (43-15) against Tulane (19-40) in a Friday 2 p.m. opener, the Tigers reacted again with some enthusiastic claps.
“It’s huge for me, I’m going to a have a bunch of people in the stands,” said LSU junior left fielder/first baseman Tre’ Morgan, who along with Tigers’ senior designated hitter/first baseman Cade Beloso, is a New Orleans native. “It’s going to be a fun weekend.”
And a welcome one in a regional that also features Western Athletic Conference tournament champion Sam Houston State (38-23) playing Pac 12 regular season runner-up Oregon State (39-18) in Friday’s nightcap.
This season, LSU won at Tulane 11-5 on April 11 and beat Sam Houston 16-4 on Feb. 25 in the Round Rock Classic. The last time LSU played Oregon State was in the 2018 NCAA tourney at the Corvallis Regional where the Tigers were twice pounded by the Beavers 14-1 and 12-0.
“One of our strong messages from day one is it's never about who we play, it's about how we play,” said Johnson after Monday’s announcement. “I've always tried to prepare my teams with that mindset for the very reason you don't get caught up in that in the postseason. We're playing great teams who’ve had great seasons.
“We're a great team. We've had a great season. It's a noteworthy accomplishment for this group to be the first LSU team to host regionals in 2019. And the first to be a national seed since 2017.
“Those aren't givens. They were very consistent throughout the year and earned that opportunity. This is a reward. They have to play like that. They want to accomplish everything. Being in the right mindset is how you do that and I'm very confident that we will play in the right mindset.”
Tigers’ second baseman Gavin Dugas, who with Beloso are the only players on the LSU roster who’ve played in NCAA tourney games in Alex Box Stadium, vowed he and his teammates will be totally focused by Friday’s gametime.
“All the freshmen on this team are no longer freshmen, everybody’s got experience," Dugas said. "We learned a lot about ourselves throughout the season, throughout the last couple of weeks. We’re going to have a great week of practice and be ready to go Friday.”
The Tigers were ranked No. 1 nationally for the first 12 weeks of the season when they were 37-7 overall and 16-4 in the SEC. Since the first weekend of May, they are 6-8 including losing two (at Auburn, home vs. Mississippi State) of their last their last two series and two of three games in the SEC tournament.
Despite the late-season dip, Johnson likes his team’s chances.
“We’re as tested as we could possibly be,” he said. “We’re the only SEC team to have a winning road record, so we've gone on the road in the toughest environments and won.
“We’ve been behind in games against teams that are hosting regionals and come back and won. We won four of the five SEC home weekends.
“The road that we've traveled, the fact that as good as we were for 85% 90% of this thing, the struggles will have helped us get to the place that we need to be the best we can be.
“And then it's about baseball. It's just about how you play. So, I think they (his players) will enter this with great confidence. I like where we’re headed.”
Johnson said he watched Tulane’s AAC tourney title game win. He knows despite the fact the Green Wave set a school record for losses in a season under first-year head coach Jay Uhlman, Tulane appears to be totally different than the team that lost to LSU on a Tuesday night game 1½ months ago.
"The season wasn’t what we wanted, but it is a long season,” Uhlman said after Sunday’s win. “As long as there is breath in the lungs, you have a chance to be in the fight. We had breath in our lungs, and when you’ve got kids that believe, these kinds of things show up.”
LSU is 6-2 in the NCAA tournament vs. Tulane. The Green Wave’s only wins were in games 2 and game 3 to win the 2001 Super Regional they hosted. They were the last two games in the storied 17-year head coaching career of LSU's Skip Bertman, who retired after winning five national championships in 11 College World Series appearances.
