LSU one win from regional title after another shut out

American Press

3 days ago

Saturday's Games
LSU 12, Dallas Baptist 0
Arkansas-Little Rock 22, Rhode Island 10
Sunday's Schedule
2 p.m. — (elimination game) — Arkansas-Little Rock vs. Dallas-Baptist.
8 p.m. — LSU vs. winner of first game.
LSU is making this look way too easy.
The Tigers won their second straight game of the Baton Rouge NCAA regional Saturday night, 11-0 over Dallas Baptist. It was the usual dominant performance from lefthander Kade Anderson and some unusual offense that seemed to be running down a creative check list of interesting ways to score.
'We played outstanding baseball tonight,' LSU coach Jay Johnson said. 'Obviously it starts and ends on the mound.'
The Tigers still haven't allowed a run in the 18 innings of regional play and, after not scoring in their final 15 innings of last week's SEC tournament, have gotten runs in 11 of their 16 at-bats this weekend.
Ethan Frey, who started the scoring with an RBI double in the first inning, also provided the most entertaining moment in the smorgasbord of runs scored.
The game was long decided by then, but he led off the eighth with a 'Little League home run.' It was officially ruled a triple that doinked off the top of the centerfield wall, but when it was mishandled by the outfielder, the 6-foot-6, 225-pound Frey never slowed down and circled the bases to score on his own hit.
The Tigers (45-14) advance to the regional finals where they'll need one more victory, with two chances to get it, to advance to the super regionals.
'We're in a good mindset,' Johnson said of the Tigers' 12th consecutive trip to a regional final, the longest streak in the nation. 'You can get to the postseason (and) a lot of times you hear stuff about 'one more,' finishing the job. That's not my mantra. My mantra is show up and enjoy competing.'
LSU will play at 8 p.m. Sunday against the winner of a 2 p.m. elimination game between DBU and Arkansas-Little Rock, which bounced back from its 7-0 Friday night loss to LSU to hammer Rhode Island 22-10.
An LSU loss Sunday would force a Monday game between the same two teams, winner take all.
It would probably be too much to ask for another shut out as there's a drop-off between the co-aces who have blanked the regional thus far.
Johnson wouldn't say who will be on the mound Sunday.
The deep starts, however, have left virtually the entire bullpen available for the rest of the regional.
'We have a lot of options,' Johnson said. 'We put ourselves in a really good spot going into tomorrow with some guys that are throwing the ball really, really well.
'We'll let that (earlier) game finish tomorrow and then see where we got from there.'
More of the same would probably work fine.
'As a starting pitcher your goal is to save the bullpen as much as you can for the next game,' Anderson said. 'We've got too many pitchers and not enough innings tomorrow. We're in a really good situation and I couldn't be more excited to watch them pitch.'
The versatile Tigers scored early and often — and just about every way imaginable — against a former teammate as DBU started LSU transfer Micah Buc. He lasted only 2.2 innings while giving up six runs.
Six of LSU's first nine runs came with two outs.
Most of it was overkill as Anderson (9-1) blanked the Patriots on four hits for his seven innings. His 11 strike outs gave him the national lead with 156.
'Kade, as Kade has been all year was the best pitcher on the planet tonight and executed on a high level,' Johnson said. 'Defense continued to support him.'
LSU got two runs rather routinely on Frey's 2-strike, 2-run double in the first.
Then it got interesting.
It included Chris Stanfield's first home run in the second inning, the first of three RBIs on a 3-for-4 night for the Tigers' No. 9 hitter.
Small ball?
The Tigers scored three in third, starting with a safety squeeze bunt by catcher Luis Hernandez that scored Steven Milam followed by RBI singles from Stanfield and Derek Curiel.
By the sixth, it was almost showing off when Steven Milam crossed the plate on the tail end of a double-steal where both he and Hernandez were safe.
Frey's eighth-inning 'round-tripper' was just icing on the cake.
'That was a really good offensive performance tonight,' Johnson said. 'Getting lead-off guys on, executing the bunting game, running bases smart and aggressive, clutch hitting, two-out hard and low line drives … that's a lot of what the blueprint looks like.'
The Baton Rouge regional winner will play the survivor of the Clemson regional in a best-two-of-three super regional with a trip to the College World Series on the line.
Host Clemson fell into the loser's bracket there with a loss to West Virginia. Saturday, but if LSU advances, it would host the super regional regardless of which team survives.
The whole NCAA tournament got a lot more interesting Saturday when the top two overall seeds lost to fall into the losers' brackets at their regionals, now needing to win three straight to advance.
No. 1 Vanderbilt lost to Louisville 3-2 and No. 2 Texas fell to UT-San Antonio 9-7.
There was no such drama in Baton Rouge.
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