Baseball: Cajuns’ run ends

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, June 3, 2013

BATON ROUGE – UL coach Tony Robichaux was worried about all season about UL’s dearth of depth on the mound.

In the end, the team that went into NCAA Regional play leading the nation in home runs and slugging percentage didn’t have quite enough hitting either.

UL managed just three hits in falling 5-1 Sunday night to LSU in a final-round Baton Rouge Regional game in front of 10,191 at LSU’s Alex Box Stadium, eliminating the Ragin’ Cajuns from their first NCAA Tournament since 2010 and advancing the No. 4 nationally seeded Tigers to upcoming Super Regional play at home against Blacksburg Regional-winner Oklahoma.

The Cajuns ended their season 43-20.

LSU led 1-0 when it broke things open with a three-run sixth inning highlighted by Raph Rhymes’ two-RBI double.

The Ragin’ Cajuns started lefty Cody Boutte, who also opened Sunday’s first elimination game.

UL beat Sam Houston State 7-5 in that one, getting two two-run home runs from Caleb Adams and a seven-inning stretch of relief pitching that started with 15 straight outs from Matt Plitt.

Boutte – an LSU-Eunice transfer from New Iberia Senior High – lasted just 1.2 innings and gave up a two-run homer to Sam Houston, but he threw just 29 pitches.

“We didn’t ice him or anything,” Cajuns coach Tony Robichaux. “I went down there when I pulled him and told him, ‘Don’t hang your hat all the game. … If we can finish this, we can possibly come back to you again. Make sure you’re ready to go.’ ”

Boutte was, as UL made it through four innings scoreless with LSU and he finished with just four hits allowed in his 4.2 innings.

The Tigers stranded two runners in the first, two in the third and two in the second before getting its first run in the fifth.

Boutte got the first two batters he faced in the top of the fifth to fly out, but he walked three of the next four batters he faced – including Ty Ross with the bases loaded, scoring Mason Katz – and dropped a popup while backpeddling as LSU took a 1-0 lead.

Boutte was lifted after the run-scoring walk for Cord Cockrell, who ended the half-inning by getting Alex Edward to ground out on a questionable call at first.

LSU added another in the sixth, when Alex Bregman’s single off of Cockrell scored Mark Laird from second.

Cockrell exited, Kendall Mayer entered and one strikeout later Rhymes lined his two-RBI single over the glove of Jace Conrad at second to make it 4-0 Tigers.

UL did get one back in the bottom of the sixth, when Dex Kjerstad reached on an error and scored on Conrad’s double off of starter Brent Bonvillain.

Conrad later stole third, but reliever Nick Rumbelow – who didn’t yield a hit in his 2.2 innings – struck out Adams and Tyler Girouard to get LSU out of the inning.

Bregman added a solo homer off of Ben Carter in the eighth to make it 5-1, and UL went down in order in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings.

Bregman was later named as the Regional MVP, while UL’s Adams and Girouard were voted onto the All-Tournament team.

LAGNIAPPE: Actual attendance over six games at the Regional was a record 38,085. … With no hits against Sam Houston State in Sunday’s first game and none against LSU, Kjerstad’s team-high hitting streak ended at 15 straight games and he wound up two hits of Nathan Nelson’s 2000 school record of 101 hits. … Sunday marked the first time UL has advanced to the final round of a regional through the loser’s bracket since 1991 in Baton Rouge against LSU.