Meet the four teams in the NCAA Tournament's Baton Rouge regional

USA Today

27-05-2025

Meet the four teams in the NCAA Tournament's Baton Rouge regional
LSU baseball earned the No. 6 overall seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, making it a Regional and potentially Super Regional host.
The Tigers finished third in the SEC regular season standings and made it to the conference tournament semifinals. With a 43-14 overall record, head coach Jay Johnson's team won consistently against multiple ranked teams in arguably the toughest conference.
The champions of the Baton Rouge and Clemson regionals will meet in a Super Regional matchup. No. 11 and ACC Tournament runner-up Clemson, West Virginia, and Big South Tournament champions USC Upstate makeup that half of the bracket.
Play for LSU starts Friday inside Alex Box Stadium against Little Rock, the Ohio Valley Tournament champions. The Tigers also host the A10 Tournament champions as well as a familiar opponent from their non conference schedule.
Here are the three teams heading to Baton Rouge for the NCAA Tournament's Regional round.
Little Rock
Despite a lackluster 24-32 overall record, the Trojans won five games to take their conference tournament crown and punch their first ticket to the NCAA Tournament since 2011. They defeated No. 1 seed Eastern Illinois twice in the process.
All-OVC second-teamers Cooper Chaplain and Ryan Geck lead Little Rock from the plate, batting over .300 and ranking in the conference's top 10 in hits and runs. Geck's 48 RBI are tied for eighth in the conference.
Led by 11th-year head coach Chris Curry, the Trojans will likely send one of their two regular starters in Jack Cline or Jackson Wells, to the mound against LSU. Cline ranks among the conference's best hurlers with 62 strikeouts and a 4.83 ERA through 82 innings.
Rhode Island
The A10 regular season and tournament champions, Rhode Island, finished the regular season at 38-20. It notched a ranked win over Oregon. Five players are batting over .300, led by All-A10 first team selections Anthony DePino and Jack Hopko.
DePino ranks first in program history in multiple career categories, runs and RBI. His 82 runs and 19 home runs rank second and third, respectively, in the A10. Hopko's 80 RBI are second in the conference. The Rams' head coach, Raphael Cerrato, won the conference's Coach of the Year award for the third time in his career.
Starting pitcher Trystan Levesque and closer Joe Sabbath earned second-team All-A10 bids. Levesque's 88.2 innings pitched and 90 strikeouts are both third in the A10. Sabbath leads the conference with six saves.
Dallas Baptist
Dallas Baptist boasts a 40-16 overall record and came up just short in its bid for a third-straight Conference USA Tournament championship. The Patriots placed five on the All-Conference first-team, led by center fielder Nathan Humphreys as Defensive Player of the Year.
In a nonconference game, LSU defeated Dallas Baptist 7-3. Daniel Dickinson hit a home run and drove in three runs during the contest, while Conner Ware threw four perfect innings and Zac Cowan picked up the win as the Tigers combined for 13 strikeouts against the Patriots' lineup.