While LSU was paired with Rice in postseason play this decade largely due to geographical reasons, the history between the teams provides the spice to this year’s matchup.The most recent match between the teams may have contained the most drama. In last season’s College World Series, the Tigers defeated the Owls in a ninth inning rally, 6-5, in an elimination game on a walk-off double by then-sophomore Blake Dean.”It was one of those things where the whole year and in the postseason somehow I ended up in the right place at the right time,” Dean said. “It happened to be me up there with the bases loaded.”The rest of the history between the teams is just as compelling.Rice swept the Tigers in the 2002 NCAA Super Regional in Houston, 6-0 and 3-0.Until last season, the teams had not met in the postseason since 2005. Three then-redshirts on that team are now seniors on this year’s team — pitchers Ryan Byrd and Nolan Cain and outfielder Nicholas Pontiff.In 2005, the Tigers beat the Owls in regular season play, 8-2, in New Orleans. But Rice got the last laugh, defeating LSU twice, 9-7 then 5-4, to knock them out of regional play in Alex Box Stadium.Cain remembers the 2005 Rice team well, as he was on the radar gun as a redshirted freshman under then-head coach Smoke Laval.”They came in there, and they were a young team that played hungry all week,” Cain said. “They really put it to us.”But LSU coach Paul Mainieri has only been a part of two games against Rice as a head coach — the game last season and one win against Rice as a coach at Notre Dame.That leads Mainieri to not be too concerned about the history between the clubs (LSU is 12-11 against Rice all time with the first matchups being two Tiger losses, 5-3 and 9-6, in 1914).”If you told me that Rice had beaten [pitchers] Anthony Ranaudo and Louis Coleman before, then I would be a little worried,” Mainieri said. Ranaudo will take the mound for the Tigers in game one. The rest of the weekend’s lineup should be Coleman, then sophomore Austin Ross if necessary in game three, but Mainieri said that will be determined after game one.”I may decide to use [Coleman or Ross] if it takes them to win Friday night,” Mainieri said. “In a best two out of three, it doesn’t matter which games you win, as long as you win two.”Mainieri added every team the Tigers play from here on out has a chance at the national championship, so the Tigers will have to take each game separately and win one at a time.The Owls will be no exception, as they come to Alex Box Stadium with one of the best pitching staffs in the nation with a 4.07 ERA led by junior starters Mike Ojala (1.73 ERA) and Ryan Berry (2.00 ERA) and freshman Taylor Wall (3.45 ERA).Rice also boasts a .322 batting average, led by Collegiate Baseball Freshman of the Year Anthony Rendon, who enters the series batting .384 with 19 home runs and 70 RBI. Dean said he knows this year’s Rice team is going to be just as good as the team the Tigers faced last season, so he would rather face them now in the super regionals.”We wouldn’t want a different team in the super regional,” Dean said. “We would have to play them eventually, so I don’t see why not just play them now so we don’t have to worry about them later.”Matty Ott — who followed LSU’s postseason run during summer ball after his senior year in high school — said he’s excited about the chance to pitch against Rice in the postseason, as it has been a dream of his to play in the postseason for LSU.”That’s what you play for all season,” Ott said. “You don’t play just to play 56 games and then hang it up to go to summer ball … You want to go to Omaha.”
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—-Contact Andy Schwehm at [email protected]