Baseball: Familiar park – Cajuns sent to Baton Rouge for Regional

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, May 28, 2013

Coach Tony Robichaux used a white towel to dry rain-dampened seats at M.L. “Tigue” Moore Field before players on his UL baseball team sat in them to watch Monday morning’s NCAA selection show on the new video board at The Tigue.

From those chairs the Ragin’ Cajuns clapped in unison as it was announced they are headed to Baton Rouge for their first NCAA Regional since 2010.

“We knew we were good enough to make it,” said starting pitcher Austin Robichaux, the coach’s son, “But seeing your name pop up there is something you can’t explain.”

The Cajuns – described an ESPNU commentator as “a team a lot of people never heard of,” despite the fact they lead the nation in home runs with 72 – learned they will play in the four-team, double-elimination Regional hosted by No. 1 seed LSU in Baton Rouge.

The Cajuns are the No. 2 seed in the Regional and will play their first game at 7 p.m. Friday against No. 3 seed 37-20 Sam Houston State, an at-large bid from the Southland Conference that won that league’s regular-season championship.

“That’s kind of where we wanted to go, actually,” Cajun catcher Michael Strentz said.

“It was a lot of fun,” centerfielder Seth Harrison added after UL’s assignment was made. “It was the first time I’ve been a part of something like this, so I was really anxious to see who we’d get paired up with.”

Good times seemed to be the order as the day Monday as the also at-large Cajuns learned their fate just 10 minutes or so into the hour-long selection show.

“We had a thought we’d get paired up in the Baton Rouge Regional,” Harrison said, “so just for our name to come up and to know officially that’s where we’re going to be – it’s exciting.”

The Baton Rouge Regional runs through Monday if an if-necessary game is needed, and the winner of it advances to a best-of-three Super Regional – vs. the winner of the Blacksburg Regional that includes host Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, Coastal Carolina and UCconn – that will determine a berth in the June 15-26 NCAA College World Series at Omaha.

This will be the 13th Regional and fifth in Baton Rouge (first since 2002) for the Cajuns, whose last and only CWS appearance came in 2000.

UL, which went 23-30 in 2012, is 41-18 and lost 16-8 to Florida Atlantic in Sunday’s championship game of the Sun Belt Conference tournament at The Tigue.

SEC tournament-winner LSU (52-9) opens at 2 p.m. Friday against No. 4 seed Jackson State (34-20), which received the SWAC’s automatic bid after winning its postseason tournament.

Both of Friday’s games will be shown online on ESPN3.

Saturday’s winner’s-bracket game will be played at 7 p.m. and the Regional’s loser’s-bracket game will be at 2 p.m. The Sunday games also will be played at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge.

First, though, Sam Houston State awaits.

“The first thing we have to do,” Tony Robichaux said, “is not look ahead.”

But if both UL and LSU both win Friday it could set up a Saturday’s winner’s-bracket game pitting Cajuns’ No. 1 Austin Robichaux (8-2, 3.20 ERA) against Tigers ace Aaron Nola (10-0, 1.94 ERA).

“It will be fun to face Nola. That’s kind of what we wanted to do, to see if we can hang with him,” Strentz said. “And I’m pretty sure we can with the hitting.

“We’ll probably put Aut (Austin Robichaux) on the mound, and that will be fun. We call know Aut’s gonna get it done. He can definitely do it, and as long as we get through that we’ll be fine.”

Neither Robichaux nor Nola threw when LSU beat UL 11-2 back in February at The Tigue.

Cody Boutte is UL’s No. 2 starter and Ryan Wilson, whom the Cajuns prefer to use out of the bullpen, was its No. 3 and a threw a complete-game four-hitter against South Alabama in the Sun Belt tourney.

But Boutte is a bit banged up with nagging injuries, so it’s uncertain who will start against Sam Houston State.

“We might even go Wilson, and then Austin (the next game), and then Boutte,” Robichaux said. “We don’t know yet.”

The NCAA’s entire 64-team field was announced this morning, with North Carolina emerging as the No. 1 seed, Vanderbilt the No. 2 after losing to LSU in the SEC tourney title game, Oregon State the No. 3, LSU the No. 4, Cal State Fullerton the No. 5 and just one team – MAC tournament-winner Bowling Green – having a losing record at 24-29.

The Sun Belt placed a league record-tying four of its teams in Regionals – UL; Troy, which opens as No. 3 seed against Alabama in the FSU-hosted Tallahassee Regional; South Alabama, a No. 2 seed that opens against Mercer in the Mississippi State-hosted Starkville Regional; and tourney-champ FAU, a No. 3 seed that opens against Towson in the North Carolina-hosted Chapel Hill Regional.

Only three only conferences – the SEC (nine), the ACC (eight) and the Pac-12 (four) – had as many teams or more get invites than the Sun Belt.

“The big reaction I have is that we’re really proud of our guys,” said Robichaux, who will be taking his ninth Cajun team to a Regional in his 19 seasons at UL.

“You talk about where we finished last season – being able to come in this fall and really working to get rid of last year, and then finishing a (game) out of the (Sun Belt) regular season (race) and playing for a conference tournament championship, I’m just real proud.

“I think they needed to be rewarded,” Robichaux added, “for a body of work they did.”