No. 14 UL at Southern Mississippi

WHERE: Pete Taylor Park; Hattiesburg, Miss.
WHEN: Three-game series starts with Game 1 at 6 tonight; Game 2 is at 1 p.m. Saturday and Game 3 is at 1 p.m. Sunday
RADIO: KPEL 96.5 FM.
RECORDS: UL 4-1, USM 2-2.
TV: None
INTERNET STREAMING: www.southernmiss.com

PITCHING MATCHUPS

TONIGHT: UL junior RHP Austin Robichaux (0-1, 1.80 ERA) vs. senior RHP Conor Fisk (first appearance of season)
SATURDAY: UL junior RHP Carson Baranik (1-0, 0.00 ERA) vs. senior RHP Cameron Giannini (0-0, 1.59 ERA)
SUNDAY: UL junior RHP Greg Milhorn (1-0, 0.00 ERA) vs. TBA
ABOUT THE CAJUNS: After dropping its 2014 season opener to Eastern Illinois on Friday night, UL has won four straight – three vs. EIU, and Tuesday night’s 5-3 road-opening victory at Northwestern State. … RF Evan Powell is hitting a team-high .455; only he and DH Tyler Girouard (.400) are hitting .400 or better. … Powell, CF Seth Harrison, LF Ryan Wilson and 2B Jace Conrad each have one home run.
ABOUT SOUTHERN MISS: The Golden Eagles have wins over Chicago State and at UL Monroe and losses to Missouri and at McNeese State. … Infielder Nick Dawson and OF Joey Harris both are hitting a team-high .429; infielder Connor Barron has Southern Miss’s only home run. … UL leads the all-time series 21-19, and the Golden Eagles have dropped their last two games against the Cajuns.

Tony Robichaux can envision Reagan Bazar as UL’s Friday-night starter – perhaps as soon as next season.

First things first, though.

For now, the hard-throwing true freshman from Texas is being broken in in a perhaps even more-stressful role – as closer for the nation’s No. 14-ranked Ragin’ Cajuns.

Welcome to college, kid.

“We’re gonna try to make him our guy,” said Robichaux, whose 4-1 Cajuns open a three-game weekend series tonight at Southern Mississippi. “I mean, it’s gonna be hard to explain to the media why you’re not bringing a guy that’s throwing 100.

“If you’ve got a Cadillac, you’ve got to drive, it you know? But, he is freshman.”

He is.

But with Bazar’s first pitch as a Cajun being clocked at 100 miles per hour by the speed gun displayed on the scoreboard at M.L. “Tigue” Field – it happened as he preserved a 13-0 win over Eastern Illinois last Saturday – it’s evident he can bring the heat.

It wasn’t always quite so toasty, though.

In his senior season at Salado High in Salado, Texas, a tiny tourist village nestled between Austin and Waco, Bazar threw in the high 80s.

Now, according to Robichaux, many pro scouts are wondering how they missed his high-90s potential.

UL didn’t miss it.

Cajuns associate head coach Anthony Babineaux saw him first, and sensed something.

And after the Pittsburgh Pirates did select Bazar in the 33rd round of last year’s MLB Draft, assistant coach Matt Deggs made sure UL would be able to keep its find.

But when Bazar added 10 miles per hour to his fastball’s velocity in only a year or so, eyebrows were raised and scouting-department bosses were asking underlings why they didn’t see what was coming.

That’s especially the case after Bazar hit 100 on that first throw, something that gets noticed like a speeding car on a Texas highway.

Whether it’s 98 or 102, all the trooper sees is super-fast.

At least one scout Saturday had the pitch at 98.

But who’s to say which gun was fast and which was slow? Either way, Bazar’s ticket has been written.

“We’re probably 1 mile off. Maybe (1.5)-to-2 miles, somewhere in there. Who knows?” Robichaux said. “But, at the end of the day, I mean, he did do it on the scoreboard.

“We did believe this (could happen),” the Cajun coach added. “We talked about this coming out of the fall, because he had hit some 94s. He had jumped to 90, and then 93, and 94, then 95, and 96.”

During that first semester at UL, Bazar has developed as a pitcher.

A wild flame-thrower he is not.

“He worked hard all fall – really hard – to narrow down the strike zone (and) not just be a disconnected, hard thrower,” said Robichaux, who doubles as UL’s pitching coach.

“We ditched his curveball and let him be a power guy with a fastball and a slider, and he’s picking up the slider really good. And he’s growing and maturing, fast. That’s a huge guy on the back end of this bullpen.”

The coach and his student started working on the breaking ball a few weeks ago.

“It’s starting to develop,” Bazar said of the slider. “It’s not 100 percent yet, but we’ve been working real hard on it.”

The curve was not exactly something Bazar relied on extensively in high school.

“I threw a breaking ball (then),” he said, “but I was mainly a fastball guy.”

If he does eventually get the slider working to his liking, it will make Bazar that much tougher of a pitcher to hit.

And with UL’s arsenal of arms bound to be thinned significantly in 2015 – weekend starters Austin Robichaux, Carson Baranik and Greg Milhorn all are juniors likely to be drafted, while starters Cody Boutte and Matt Plitt and key relievers Matt Hicks, Ryan Wilson and Ben Carter all are seniors – it’s also one reason Tony Robichaux could see Bazar perhaps some day sliding into the Cajuns’ No. 1 starter’s spot.

“We’re gonna be devastated pitching-wise,” Robichaux said. “So this guy can be an enormous Friday-night guy for us down the road, potentially.”

Not now, though.

“This year, a big-time closer for us,” Robichaux said.

In Robichaux’s mind, the precise speed of that first pitch doesn’t matter nearly as much as how Bazar handles it.

He’s told him as much, and his son Austin – a junior and UL’s current Friday-night starter – had a long talk too with the freshman about how to handle all the attention.

“It’s folklore now,” Tony Robichaux said of the 100 on the scoreboard. “That travels fast.

“I told him … ‘That can go from a pat on the back to a knife in the back really quick, so you need to stay focused on what you’re doing and leave all this outside stuff alone.’ ”

Making such a name so early in a college career is a path, Robichaux believes, peppered with potential peril.

That’s why the Cajun coach is toiling now to cut off dangerous at the pass for Bazar, a 6-foot-7, 235-pound righty with a big-leaguer’s build.

“Those-type bodies, those-type kids – they’re born, just like a guy with power, with a good gift,” Robichaux said. “But they’re also born with a curse, too, because everybody expects you to be that every time out. And that’s tough to do.

“You’re fighting the game of baseball. A home run hitter’s not gonna hit a home run every time he comes up to the plate.

“We’re working with him,” the Cajun coach added, “to stay grounded.”

Facing UL hitters during fall practice had to help with that.

The Cajuns led the nation last season in home runs and were sixth in the country in batting average. Bats like those can dish humble pie in a hurry.

“I think he’s got a lot of that, because in the fall we hit him out of the ballpark,” Robichaux said. “We helped him understand why it’s important to get the ball down.

“I think that’s what’s hopefully making better now, is that he’s really starting to get his hand down and really getting the ball down. Because once he learns to get that two-seam down, and then throw up on purpose, instead of throwing up all the time, then he’s gonna be even-more dangerous.

“And that,” Robichaux added, “is where he’s kind of getting right now. … He’s getting better by the day.”

Bazar, who followed that initial pitch up with a few more clocked in the high 90s, had no idea that the board, which was to his back, had shown 100.

But then he heard a buzz among 3,500 or so at The Tigue.

“I didn’t know off the bat, but then I heard the crowd’s reaction, and it kind of sunk in,” Bazar said. “I looked over my shoulder, and I got the last glimpse of it.

“But I wasn’t worried about that as much as just trying to get these people out.”

Beyond bringing the heat, getting outs is something else at which Bazar – at least so far – seems rather proficient.

He retired two of the three batters he faced in the first outing, which was fairly pressure-free because of the double-digit lead.

But then he sat down both of the hitters he saw in the ninth against EIU on Sunday to preserve a 9-8 lead and get his first save as a Cajun.

And on Wednesday night Bazar needed just 15 pitches to retire four of the five batters he faced in a 5-3 win at Northwestern State. He entered to get UL out of a two-out, two-on jam in the eighth, then made it out of the ninth for his second save of the season.

The Sunday and Wednesday situations are just the sort Robichaux believes will make Bazar better.

They come with an element of risk, but can pay dividends down the road.

“I brought him in the other day (in the 9-8 game vs. EIU),” Robichaux said, “and, like I told the coaches, ‘Whatever happens happens. If we get beat, we’ll wear it on the chin. But we’ve got to get this guy better, and there’s only one way to do it.’

“You have to put him in it, and let him see what he’s gonna do. And when you can develop somebody and still win, that’s a huge bonus.”

Robichaux goes the restaurant route to hammer home his point.

“When you go eat, you don’t want the waiter that’s in training. … You just don’t,” he said. “You want their best waiter. But somewhere along the way that waiter had to learn.

“So there’s only one way to develop a kid like that. You have to put him in the fire.”