The LSU baseball team relied on one constant as it swept Centenary during its season-opening weekend series: starting pitching.The Tigers (3-0) got five shutout innings from junior Anthony Ranaudo in their 5-4 win against the Gents (0-3) Friday, five shutout innings from junior Austin Ross in Saturday’s 25-8 rout and six shutout innings from sophomore Joey Bourgeois in their 4-0 win Sunday.”I said [Saturday] night that [Sunday] would be like an audition for Joey Bourgeois,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “And if he pitches the way he did [Sunday] all season, we’re going to be pretty good.”Sunday’s final score could have been a bit misleading as LSU tacked on three of its four runs late in the game after being shut down by Centenary junior David Benson.”It was a really well played, crisply played game by both teams,” Mainieri said. “We hit several balls hard that could’ve gotten through or fallen in, and we could’ve finished with a bigger offensive output, but you’ve got to give credit to Centenary.”Bourgeois started the game with a three-pitch strikeout, perhaps foreshadowing things to come. He struck out another batter in that inning and seemingly locked into cruise control from there.”I figured after I got that first strikeout I might as well go pound every hitter and keep my fastball down in the zone,” Bourgeois said.After three scoreless innings from both teams, senior first baseman Blake Dean put the Tigers on the board when he belted a solo home run into the right-field bleachers.”Once Dean put up that home run, my confidence went up even more,” Bourgeois said.Dean finished the weekend with eight RBIs and one home run.Sophomore right fielder Mikie Mahtook scored an insurance run for LSU in the bottom of the seventh when senior designated hitter Matt Gaudet hit an RBI single.Gaudet was cut from the LSU team prior to the 2009 season, but thus far has come up very big for the Tigers with six hits and five RBIs against Centenary.”He’s a good hitter,” Mainieri said. “There’s no question that we had a place for him where he could contribute to our team. He earned the DH spot. Nothing was handed to him.”The Tigers lit up the scoreboard again in the bottom of the eighth when junior catcher Micah Gibbs hit a two-run home run over the distance marker on the left side of center field to bring the score to 4-0.Those were the only runs scored in the game. Bourgeois went six scoreless innings in his first start as a Tiger while only allowing four hits and striking out seven.His Centenary counterpart, Benson, pitched five complete innings while striking out two and only allowing six hits. His one earned run was Dean’s homer.LSU sophomore pitcher Jordan Rittiner pitched two innings in a relief appearance Sunday for the Tigers and struck out two while walking none. Gibbs said performances like the one by the left-handed pitcher Sunday would be critical for future success.”It’s going to be huge,” he said. “Last year we really didn’t have a lot of lefties in our arsenal until [former LSU pitcher] Chad [Jones] came along.Despite the good Sunday pitching performance, Mainieri said he would have liked to see more from his relief pitching, but feels other areas are coming along nicely.”I liked just about everything I saw this weekend,” he said. “The only thing I saw that concerns me coming out of the weekend is that we’re going to need to find more pitching. Three or four guys that pitched did not pitch all that well.”The sweep was the second consecutive season-opening series sweep by LSU, and the win on Friday marked eight consecutive season opening wins by the Tigers.Saturday’s win was Mainieri’s 1,000th for his career.”I’ve had the great privilege to coach for four great universities,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of great kids over the years, and those kids won the games — not me. For some reason they keep a record of the coaches, so I guess this is the 1,000th one that we’ve won.” LSU will face McNeese at 4 p.m. Wednesday in its next contest.–Contact Johanathan Brooks at [email protected]