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BATON ROUGE - After experiencing a little drama in Friday's opener of the Baton Rouge Regional against fourth-seeded East Carolina, UL had to play the waiting game to find out today's opponent in the championship bracket.
The matchup with more storylines than a soap opera was finally set after top-seeded LSU mercy-ruled No. 4 Mississippi Valley State, 8-0, in five innings in Friday's nightcap at Tiger Park.
With opening day wins by both 16th-ranked UL (47-12) and 15th-ranked LSU (43-16), the two teams will face off at 1 p.m. today in the first meeting between the teams in two years. Just in case you've been living in a swamp without electricity for the past decade, here's why you should care about this rematch in a series LSU leads 13-3.
Sometimes silence is deafening. Two nationally ranked programs separated by 50 miles have not played each other in the regular season since 2001. Two years have passed since they played in the 2006 Baton Rouge Regional, in which LSU grabbed two victories against the Cajuns to clinch the region title.
<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080517/SPORTS/805170322/1006/rss02" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
Joshua Parrott •
jparrott@theadvertiser.com • May 17, 2008
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Neither team will say why they haven't played in the regular season in almost a decade.
Some think LSU coach Yvette Girouard, who coached the Cajuns from 1981-2000, is bitter about being branded a traitor by some UL fans. She said the teams would play again "sometime down the line" but that it would "probably not" be as long as she's in Baton Rouge.
"They know why we don't play," Girouard told The Daily Advertiser earlier in the week, without providing any further explanation.
While Girouard seems more interested in talking about being done wrong after all she did for the Cajuns, UL co-coach Stefni Lotief has politely declined to get personal. She wants the attention to be on her players and what they've accomplished instead of focusing on the past.
Lotief, who pitched for the Cajuns under Girouard from 1987-90, said she would "welcome the opportunity" to continue the regular season series. According to those words, she wants to play and Girouard doesn't.
After Friday's 2-1 win, Lotief said the Cajuns would rather not focus on the distractions associated with this rivalry. The task at hand in the postseason is enough to deal with.
"I think our focus is just on regionals," Lotief said. "Every team we're going to play at this point in the season is a very good and dynamic team. So all we can worry about is playing our kind of softball pitch by pitch and being the best that we can be. It doesn't matter where we are (playing). We're glad that we're so close (to home) because of our fans.
"But anybody we see at this point in the season is going to be a very good team. From that aspect, we're just looking forward to playing softball."
LSU has won five straight in the series - including the last four in regional play under Girouard. That includes three regionals in Baton Rouge and one in Lafayette.
The Cajuns last beat the Tigers, 2-1, on April 18, 2001. UL's only regional win in the series came when the Cajuns beat LSU, 4-1, in 2000 in Baton Rouge.
But hope is still out there for reconciliation in this rivalry. After Friday's first game, UL third baseman Melissa Verde shared a brief hug with LSU pitcher Cody Trahan behind the third-base dugout.
The exchange should come as no surprise. Both are east Texas natives - Verde from Beaumont and Trahan from Little Cypress. And we all know how friendly people are in Texas.
Who knows? Maybe the brief exchange is a sign of things to come this weekend. But more than likely, it's just something else the fans on both sides can talk about.
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