The Tigers baseball team will be looking to carry its hot bats to Natchitoches and try to build off Sunday’s 12-run, 14-hit performance against South Carolina in tonight’s contest against Northwestern State.
No. 8 LSU (21-10-1) has won five of its last six and eight of its last 11 games. NSU is 21-13, but was swept over the weekend by Southland Conference foe Lamar.
The two teams met in a season-opening, three-game series at Alex Box Stadium in February. LSU swept the series.
The Tigers will feature a surprise starter for the contest in the form of relief pitcher Billy Sadler. Sadler, mainly a late inning worker who will probably only pitch two or three innings, is 1-1 on the year with a 3.63 ERA.
LSU shortstop Aaron Hill said the Tigers need to concentrate on beating an in-state foe for the second straight week. The Tigers beat Nicholls State one week ago.
“It’s a midweek game, and we tend to struggle a little bit with those,” Hill said. “We have to really focus. If we had a weakness, that would be it. We’re coming off of a big series like [the South Carolina series] and play an in-state school, and we tend to be a little lackadaisical.
“We’re going to try to come out and swing the bats like [last] weekend.”
LSU is batting .308 as a team.
First baseman Clay Harris leads the Tigers with a .405 batting average. The Southeastern Conference requires a player to have 2.5 at-bats per game to be considered amongst its leaders in statistical categories. Including Sunday’s game, Harris has 2.3 at bats per game.
If he were included in the statistics, Harris would be third in the conference in batting average.
Third baseman Ivan Naccarata is second on the team with a .328 average and is followed by left fielder Bruce Sprowl and designated hitter Ryan Patterson at .322 and .321 respectively.
Sprowl said the team is going to play hard and take things on a game-by-game basis.
“I remember them being a pretty good ballclub,” Sprowl said. “It’s going to be like any other game [in that] we have to come out and play hard.”
NSU will be playing its second game in as many days. The Demons hosted Alabama at home last night.
LSU coach Smoke Laval said he wished he knew how to keep his team’s focus for midweek games. He said sometimes this is a problem.
“If you know how to do that, let me know,” Laval said. “I’d bottle that thing up. Hopefully we don’t take them lightly.”