While LSU’s Jake Tompkins and J.C. Holt have not producednumbers this year similar to their stellar 2002 seasons, bothturned in solid outings in LSU’s opening regional win overNortheastern.
           Tompkins,the MVP of last year’s regional in Baton Rouge, held the Huskies toone run after six innings before giving up three runs in theseventh. He said his pitching faltered in the late innings becausehe had not started a game since May 6, when the Tigers beat Loyola,21-6.
“My arm feltpretty good,” Tompkins said. “I think that they (Northeastern) area much better team than I anticipated. They didn’t get cheated onany of their at-bats. They were tough outs and they playedhard.”
Northeastern coachNeil McPhee said Tompkins had the team’s batters fooled.
“The strikeouts hehad were on his breaking ball,” McPhee said. “We had a number ofplayers swinging at the breaking ball in the dirt.”
LSU coach SmokeLaval said he started Tompkins in order to save his other pitchersfor the later games in the regional. His plan was to have Tompkinsthrow about seven innings, and have the team score enough runs sothe bullpen would not have to struggle to hold the lead.
“You need someonelike Jake [Tompkins] to calm everything down and keep us in theballgame until we could break it open,” Laval said. “I figuredsomething like that would happen and that they would make a runlate and hopefully we would be up by enough.”
           Holt,the sophomore center fielder who has raised his batting averagelate in the season, had his first multi-home run game of theseason, belted four hits and drove in five runs to give Tompkinsplenty of run support.
           ”There’snot really much to say,” Holt said. “I had four hits so it was abig day, but I mean I wasn’t expecting two home runs. I thoughtthat maybe I would get a double or two and a bunch of singles,because most people don’t expect that kind of power output from me,but the wind was blowing a little bit and I was able to stay on theball.”
           McPheesaid he was not surprised about Holt’s 4-for-5 performance.
“When you play ateam like LSU that is strong one through nine (in the lineup, weexpect one through 9 to be able to swing the bat,” McPhee said. “He(Holt) had a great day. He went the other way twice, and that’s asgood as anybody we’ve seen.”
LSUwill face Tulane (44-17) Saturday at 3 p.m. The Green Wave defeatedUNC Wilmington, 8-3.