The New Orleans baseball team wandered into Alex Box Stadium last season on a nine-game losing streak and left with a one-game winning streak.
The Privateers, who finished the 2010 season with a 5-19 road record, surprised the LSU baseball team with a 7-4 victory.
“We came back from a tough weekend series at Ole Miss,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “I didn’t see the team the whole day on Monday. They showed up to the field on Tuesday, and it was obvious we weren’t ready to play.”
Mainieri said No. 20 LSU (3-0) practiced Monday to avoid a similar situation as it prepares for another Tuesday night game against UNO (1-2) tonight.
“Baseball is a game you’ve got to do in a repetitive way to be good at it,” Mainieri said. “Just going out and taking batting practice will force our kids to maintain their focus and work on their skills with an eye on the game.”
Junior shortstop Austin Nola said practicing early in the week is essential after losing to in-state rivals in midweek games the last two seasons.
Nola played for the Tigers when they lost to UNO last year and to Nicholls State in 2009.
“If you take a whole day off, reality is your swing’s going to be slow, your hands are going to be slow, and you’re just going to be moving slow,” he said.
Junior college transfer Tyler Jones is expected to take the mound tonight. He was scheduled to pitch Sunday but was suspended for the weekend because of a disciplinary issue.
Jones, a Milwaukee native, was a JUCO First-Team All-American in 2010 pitching for Madison Area Tech, which advanced to the JUCO World Series for the first time since 2005. He had a 9-2 record with 77 strikeouts and a 3.01 ERA last year.
Mainieri said Jones can’t afford a bad outing after senior pitcher Ben Alsup and freshman pitchers Kevin Gausman and Kurt McCune all went at least five innings in Tiger victories last weekend.
“He’s going to have to fight his way back into that rotation,” Mainieri said. “He knows it’s going to be an uphill climb because all three starting pitchers pitched so well this past weekend.”
The Tigers enter tonight on a three-game winning streak, unlike last year when LSU played UNO after dropping three straight. LSU’s dominant weekend series against Wake Forest included two wins by eight runs or more.
Sophomore first baseman Alex Edward said the Tigers can’t gloat if they want to build on that streak, especially after experiencing UNO’s wrath last year.
“With college baseball you can lose any game if you’re not completely focused,” he said. “I think we definitely know that now, and we’re going to come out with a purpose.”
UNO dropped two of three to Southern to start the season, including a season-opening 19-2 loss.
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Mainieri, who was on the UNO baseball team in the late ’70s, said after tremendous budget cuts and a lack of funding within the athletic program, the Privateer baseball program isn’t the same as when he played.
UNO is in the midst of a reclassification process after submitting a proposal to the LSU Board of Supervisors to change from Division I to Division II.
“The sad thing is the UNO program has changed dramatically since the announcement they’re going to drop down in classification,” he said. “They just don’t have the same resources to work with that they had at one point.”
Mainieri said LSU still can’t take UNO lightly.
“We have a saying in our program that when midnight strikes the day is over, and we put yesterday behind us,” he said.
 
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Contact Rowan Kavner at [email protected]