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Ignore the weather.
It's baseball season.
To be exact, it's 28 days until UL's baseball squad opens its 2007 regular season, and Cajun coach Tony Robichaux and his staff don't have much time to make amends for what they consider shortcomings from last season.
"We were one game away from a championship last year, we want to rectify that," Robichaux said. "We didn't play good enough in the middle of the week. We played poorly in the conference tournament. We didn't get to postseason play. We want to rectify all of that.
"When you add all that up, there's a lot of work to do in the next 28 days."
The Cajuns, coming off a 39-20 season in which they finished second in the Sun Belt Conference by one game, open their season on Feb. 13 against Nicholls State at Moore Field. UL began its preparations with a team meeting Sunday evening and a pair of workouts Monday when the Cajuns dodged the weather.
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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com
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Those opening workouts were the first since the Red-White Fall World Series, six intrasquad games that wrapped up fall practice.
"We're going to try to use Monday through Friday this week to get back to where we were fundamentally," Robichaux said. "We'll lift twice a week and condition at 6 a.m. three times a week along with practice, and try to get their legs back under them and their conditioning.
"Hopefully we can start some control-type intrasquads off a tee over the weekend while we get pitchers ready. We've got to be careful with the pitchers because of the weather if we get a cold snap."
Robichaux said that he likes where his team left off at the end of the fall, as well as his team's overall talent level and depth.
"We have the talent to be successful," said Robichaux, who figures to earn his 700th career coaching win around mid-season. "We were inexperienced in a lot of areas last year and we're more mature there now.
"This team will be able to move people around, and that helps us depth-wise. We've got people that can play several places without hurting us defensively, and that helps us late in games."
That includes a revamped outfield that includes converted infielders Jefferies Tatford and Matt Casbon and several first-year players that will team to fill for three departed starters. In the infield, last season's leading hitter Devery Van De Keere will likely bounce between third and first base because of depth at the corners, and similar depth is available up the middle.
In fact, the only places were names can be written in ink on the lineup card are behind the plate and on the mound. Junior Jonathan Lucroy returns for his second year as regular catcher and this third year in the regular batting lineup, after a 12-homer, 68-RBI season last year.
"That's where we start building the lineup," Robichaux said of Lucroy. "I really like his strength and maturity now. He's changed a lot from last year to this year ... his sense of adjustment as a hitter. And this team will protect him. We're not going to have a .160 hitter in front or behind him."
UL returns its top three pitchers from last year in juniors Hunter Moody (12-2, 2.63) and Buddy Glass (8-3, 2.17) and sophomore Danny Farquhar (6-1, 2.17, 4 saves). But Robichaux said the Cajun bullpen could be the sink-or-swim area.
"We'll go as far as our bullpen goes," he said. "But with the maturity of Farquhar and (Greg) Harmon and the way (Greg) Wilborn and (Andrew) Laughter threw in the fall, I feel better than we did at the start of last spring. And our newcomers all threw well in the fall."
Having a deep staff will help, since mid-week games are just as important as Sun Belt games in post-season bid determinations.
"With the RPI as it is today, there's no such thing as weekend and weekday starters," Robichaux said. "Every game's like a conference game now."
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