As he watched his team practice its bunting from afar three hours before game time, LSU coach Paul Mainieri sensed a lack of focus.
With its first Southeastern Conference series two days away, Mainieri’s fear was realized as the Tigers (16-1) trudged through a sloppy seven innings before pulling away in the eighth for a 9-3 victory against Nicholls State (9-9) in Alex Box Stadium.
“This was certainly a trap game for us,” Mainieri said. “Not only did we play like it was a trap game — it felt like a trap game.”
Senior first baseman Mason Katz shared Mainieri’s fears as he overheard some freshmen Tigers conversing about rooming assignments in Starkville, Miss., during pregame warmups.
Katz, who lifted his sixth home run of the season out to left field to cap a five-run eighth inning, credited his team with finding a way to win despite the excitement surrounding its looming series with Mississippi State.
“The focus wasn’t there as it normally is,” Katz said. “It’s hard to change an 18-year-old kid’s focus from going on an SEC baseball trip. We did a good job of finding a way to win.”
The Tigers appeared destined to prove Mainieri wrong at the start of the game when sophomore outfielder Chris Sciambra was hit by a pitch and freshman outfielder Mark Laird singled to put two runners on before the Colonels could record an out.
Freshman shortstop Alex Bregman followed by tattooing a line drive to Colonel second baseman Philip Lyons, who made the snag and turned a rare 4-3 triple play to hush the anxious 4,775 Tiger fans primed for a big inning.
“That was pretty interesting,” Bregman said. “I thought I hit that ball really well, actually. It was just right at him.”
LSU would respond with two runs in the second, courtesy of four straight singles to open the inning, highlighted by junior third baseman Christian Ibarra’s blooper that fell just barely in front of a diving Matt Richard.
After Nicholls State got on the board in the third inning, it broke through for two runs in the fifth off Tiger southpaw Hunter Devall to take a 3-2 lead.
Devall and nine other LSU pitchers combined to surrender six hits and only three walks, with senior lefty Brent Bonvillain picking up his first win of the season.
Katz responded in the fifth with an RBI single to score Laird, who led off the inning with a single of his own, to knot the game at three.
Ibarra came through again in the seventh with his second single of the night to score Bregman and put the Tigers back on top, 4-3.
“It was a good pitch,” Ibarra said. “It was coming in on me, it went right on the middle and I just pushed it up the middle.”
The Tigers then exploded for five runs in the eighth inning, with Bregman registering a 2-RBI double and Katz sending a high homer to left field to pad the scoreboard in what was a much closer game than the score indicated.
Aided by five Colonel errors through the first five innings, the Tigers shook off several mistakes of their own to pull out an ugly victory, according to Mainieri.
“I knew that they just didn’t have their minds totally in it,” Mainieri said. “Before the game I said to myself, ‘I just hope we can score one more run than the other team.’”
LSU baseball head coach Paul Mainieri speaks with reporters Wednesday, March 13, 2013 after the 9-3 victory against Nicholls State at Alex Box Stadium.
