BATON ROUGE - So much for the preliminaries.

It's LSU and UL today in the winners' bracket finals of the NCAA Softball Regional at LSU's Tiger Park, just like the two teams' fans wanted all along.

"It's exactly what everybody wanted to see," said Stuart Chambliss, a former Ragin' Cajun football player whose wife Susan is an alumni of the UL softball team. "That's why I bought tickets for every game."

The third-seeded Cajuns locked up their berth in today's game between the unbeatens with a 2-0 victory over second-seeded North Carolina State in Friday's tournament opener. Top seed LSU followed with an easy 5-0 win over Princeton in Friday's nightcap to set up the first meeting between the clubs since the 2002 NCAA Regional in Lafayette.

It'll be the 14th all-time meeting between the two teams, and the fifth since Yvette Girouard left as Cajun coach after 19 record-setting years and took over the LSU program. The Tigers have won three of the four games since Stefni Lotief, a record-setting pitcher under Girouard, took over UL.

But the teams haven't met in four seasons, after fan interaction nearly boiled over before, during and after that 2002 regional meeting.

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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com