Don’t expect LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri to look ahead to LSU’s Southeastern Conference-opening series with Kentucky this weekend.SEC play is the last thing on Mainieri’s mind as the Tigers face Southeastern Louisiana tonight at 6 p.m., following last weekend’s series loss to Illinois.”Right now, I’m not even thinking about Kentucky,” Mainieri said. “We have two very difficult midweek games this week beginning with Southeastern, and we’ve got to focus on playing better.”The Tigers had a hit-or-miss weekend at the plate against Illinois. LSU scored 22 runs Saturday but had a combined three runs on Friday and Sunday. One of Mainieri’s specific concerns is 2008 All-American outfielder Blake Dean. Dean comes into today’s game hitting just .268, down .085 points from his .353 average last season.”That’s just baseball,” Dean said. “It’s not to the point to where you change up the things that have brought you success in the past. I’ve hit some balls hard, and they’ll start to drop.”But Mainieri appears to be more concerned with the play of his junior outfielder and said getting Dean on track is vital for the Tigers.”Somehow I’ve got to get him to relax and enjoy the game again,” Mainieri said. “He’s way too good of a hitter to be having these kinds of problems.” Dean and the LSU hitters should have plenty of good pitches to hit against Southeastern Louisiana.The Lions have given up eight or more runs in six of their 12 games this season.But Southeastern has won seven of those 12 games, thanks to a powerful offense that has scored more than nine runs per game on the season. LSU freshman pitcher Chris Matulis will try to combat that offense in his third start of the season for the Tigers.Matulis may be making his first of two starts this week, as the Lake Worth, Fla., native is a candidate to replace sophomore Daniel Bradshaw in the weekend rotation for LSU against Kentucky.Mainieri said Bradshaw would be replaced from his role as the Saturday starter after not advancing past the fourth inning in each of his first two starts.”He’s been up in the zone with everything,” Mainieri said. “We’re going to turn him around and have him pitch in the middle of the week to try to get him straightened out and then figure out what we’re going to do about the weekend rotation for the series, but he’s probably not going to be in it.”Sophomore shortstop DJ LeMahieu said a refined pitching rotation is one of many things the Tigers have to work on if the team hopes to make another run at the College World Series.”We have to be more patient at the plate,” he said. “We have to not make so many costly fielding errors and really just work on all the little things that have been giving us problems.”—-
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