For the first time since 2002, the LSU baseball team is on a four-game losing streak after Arkansas became the first Southeastern Conference team to sweep the Tigers in Alex Box Stadium with three wins over the weekend.
The losing streak started Tuesday with a 1-0 loss to Tulane at the Box and continued with an 11-8 loss Friday, an 11-10 game Saturday and a 7-5 defeat in Sunday’s final game.
The Tigers lost four games in a row in 2002 when they dropped two games to Vanderbilt and single games to Louisiana Lafayette and Ole Miss.
LSU (24-9) looks to end its current streak today at 6:30 p.m. when it hosts Nicholls State at Alex Box Stadium.
The Tigers also play Southeastern Louisiana on Wednesday at Zephyr Field in Metairie in the first annual Wally Pontiff Jr. Classic before hosting Georgia in a three-game SEC series next weekend.
The Tigers’ three losses to Arkansas dropped them from No. 2 to No. 12 in the Collegiate Baseball poll and put them in a tie for third place in the SEC West at 6-6, two games behind Ole Miss and Arkansas.
The Colonels (12-21) lost two out of three to Texas-Arlington last weekend.
Justin Meier is the scheduled starter for the Tigers in tonight’s game against the Colonels.
Meier (4-2, 3.35 ERA) began the season as the Friday night starter in the weekend rotation, but the sophomore has struggled in his last three starts. In Friday’s game against Arkansas, Meier did not make it out of the second inning and gave up seven runs on six hits.
Meier was not the only LSU pitcher to struggle against the Razorbacks.
Saturday starter Clay Dirks gave up six runs on seven hits in four innings in his start, and Sunday starter Nate Bumstead allowed seven runs on 12 hits in seven innings in the final game.
The Tigers fell behind 9-3 in Friday night’s game and rallied to within 9-7 in the third inning before Arkansas pitcher Jay Sawatski (4-2) calmed the storm with six solid innings.
The Tigers seemed to respond Saturday with an early 4-1 lead for Dirks, but the Razorbacks scored seven runs in the middle innings to take an 8-4 lead. LSU rallied to tie the game and would have taken the lead in the eighth, but left fielder Ryan Patterson missed home plate for the second time that game.
Arkansas scored three in the top of the tenth and held off LSU for an 11-10 win.
In Sunday’s game, Arkansas matched every LSU rally to win 7-5.
One bright spot for the Tigers over the weekend was the bat of right fielder Jon Zeringue.
Zeringue hit 6-for-13 against the Razorbacks with two home runs and four RBIs. Zeringue leads the Tigers with 10 home runs and 30 RBIs and is second on the team with a .381 batting average.
Offensively, the Tigers raised their team batting average four points to .331 and scored 25 runs.
“There is nothing really wrong,” Zeringue said. “We hit the ball, but [Arkansas] just hit it a lot better than us and got a lot more breaks than we did this weekend.”