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Not one member of UL's baseball squad wanted to lose its regular-season finale Saturday, but the 9-3 loss to New Orleans' Privateers may have been good for the Ragin' Cajun squad.
The Saturday setback didn't affect much. UL had long ago claimed the Sun Belt Conference crown, and ended up winning the league by an unprecedented seven-game margin by taking two of three games at UNO.
The two-out-of-three also put the Cajun squad over the 40-win regular-season milestone, topping last year's total wins. The 40 wins going into postseason play is the highest victory total in a 56-game regular season since Tony Robichaux took over as head coach in 1995.
It also likely didn't affect any postseason chances past this week's Sun Belt Tournament. Even with the loss, UL finished its season winning eight of its last nine and 11 of its last 13, more than fulfilling the NCAA Division I Baseball Committee's charge to reward teams playing well at the end of the season.
UL went into the weekend ranked 13th on the NCAA's official Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) and on both of the most-recognized online RPI projections. The Cajuns were 14th on the projected lists as of Sunday and will likely be in that position when the official list is released on Wednesday.
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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com
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More than anything else, the Cajuns needed to look at some things and get work for some pitchers over the weekend. And, for better or worse, they got that opportunity.
"The reality is we needed to get some guys back in action," Robichaux said after Saturday's loss that snapped an eight-game win streak. "We had guys come in and throw that we needed to see and get some mound time before the tournament."
UL used five pitchers Sunday - the second-most seeing mound action since the first of May - after not going past three in any game over the last two weeks. Robichaux would have rather not done that, but it became necessary when starter Buddy Glass was ineffective in his return after three weeks of inactivity.
Glass threw to only four batters to start Saturday's game, not recording an out and leaving with a 3-0 deficit. That outing throws a curve ball into the Cajuns' pitching plans entering the Wednesday-Saturday double-elimination tournament at South Alabama's Stanky Field in Mobile, Ala.
"We needed to see where we were," Robichaux said. "You can throw all you can in practice and in intrasquad, but that doesn't take the place of throwing in games."
UL had more hits in Saturday's finale (11) than it had in either of the two previous wins in the series. But those hits didn't come at key times as they had on Thursday and Friday. And, after having no errors in the first two games with the Privateers, UL committed five on Saturday - the most since a March 17 game at Middle Tennessee.
In essence, the Cajuns had the letdown they could have had a week ago, one day after clinching the regular-season title, or in either of the first two games against the Privateers. Instead of letting down in those earlier games, UL finished off a regular-season with its ninth series win in 10 tries this season.
"Our first goal was to win the conference," Robichaux said. "Now we'll move on to goal number two."
"We still have three titles we want to win," said outfielder Nolan Gisclair, who had UL's only home run of the weekend series on Saturday. "This will help re-motivate us."
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