(Photo by LSU Athletics)
By Hunt Palmer
I can still remember the hush being dented by the dull roar of the Sam Houston State dugout.
Aaron Nola, 10-0 on the year and weeks from being named National Pitcher of the Year, plodded off the mound, stoic as always. His defense had committed three errors. The Bearkats led 5-0, and Nola had fired 43 pitches in the first inning.
Not even Sam Houston himself could have conjured up a more disastrous start for LSU in the Winners Bracket game of the 2013 Baton Rouge Regional, and he made an early career out of pillaging others’ territories.
As the Tigers have done 24 of 27 times in Baton Rouge, LSU won that regional. But it wasn’t easy, and it almost never is.
That 2013 team entered regional play at 52-9. Jackson State and Sam Houston couldn’t possibly keep up, right? Well, Raph Rhymes, the nation’s leading hitter, and Alex Bregman, the Brooks Wallace winner, collided in left field against Jackson State and sent Bregman to the hospital. And then Nola was on the ropes 30 hours later.
Both future big leaguers would bounce back in a big way. Nola’s outing turning Herculean when he lasted seven innings despite the disastrous first. Bregman would homer later in the weekend.
Four years earlier, a future national title team trailed Southern 2-1 after six thanks to a dazzling performance from Southern southpaw Chase Richard. LSU would erupt for seven in the seventh, but that only removed the drama for 24 hours.
Baylor pushed Anthony Ranaudo and the Tigers to the brink on Saturday night. The big fireballer only allowed one earned run in nine innings, and that wasn’t enough to finish the job. It took Austin Nola’s RBI single to center in the 10th to put LSU in front for good, 3-2. A flag flies just outside The Box for that team, but the regional was tense.
The 2015 Tigers are under appreciated. Those Tigers showed up in Omaha 53-10. They’re at least in the discussion with 1998, 2013 and 2017 as best team without a title. Lowly UNC-Wilmington gave LSU everything it wanted on Saturday and Sunday night of the regional. Freshman Alex Lange fired a complete game shutout on Saturday night (and into Sunday morning) to win 2-0, and sophomore Jared Poche backed that up with 8.2 innings of shutout baseball in another 2-0 win Sunday night.
It took 17.2 innings of shutout baseball from the starters to advance.
Poche had to reassume the Superman cape a year later when Rice sent the Baton Rouge Regional to a Monday. The Owls led early, and Poche returned after starting on Friday to retire 16 straight Owl hitters on Monday evening. That allowed LSU to surge ahead of Rice in the seventh when Greg Deichmann launched a titanic two-run homer to give LSU a 3-2 lead. The Rally Possum looked on from the dugout, smirking I’m sure.
Southeastern Louisiana hung five on Lange the following year, 2017, in the Saturday night game. Lange hadn’t given up five runs in an inning all season. The Lions led LSU 5-4 after two. LSU would advance all the way to the national final that year, but it didn’t come without a regional scare no one could have predicted.
Even the 2023 team, largely regarded as the best team in school history, had to really sweat in regional play.
Oregon State jumped out to a 3-0 lead on Ty Floyd in Saturday’s game, and then the rains came. Thatcher Hurd took over after the delay and pitched excellently, but the Beavers still managed to erase a late LSU lead and tie the score at five in the seventh.
You get the picture.
While on Thursday it’s quite reasonable to paint a picture of LSU handling Little Rock, Dallas Baptist and Rhode Island, history suggests this thing will get hairy once or twice.
Of course, history also suggests LSU will “regional romp” around The Box Sunday or Monday evening.
