The Sun Belt Conference baseball tournament hasn't exactly been friendly to the UL squad, and the Ragin' Cajuns won't have a lot of history on their side when they enter this year's tournament as the top seed.

In fact, the Cajuns need a victory in Wednesday's tournament opener against host South Alabama just to get back to the .500 mark for its all-time tournament record. But at least Middle Tennessee is on the other side of the bracket.

The Cajuns are 24-25 all-time in Sun Belt tournament play and haven't won a tournament title since 1998. In fact, UL has made it to the championship game only twice since joining the Sun Belt for the 1992 season, making the title game in 1997 before losing to South Alabama.

UL's tournament crown came one year later when the Cajuns took a 10-7 victory over New Orleans after falling to the Privateers 20-5 earlier in the day in the double-elimination event.

The Cajuns have played on the tournament's final day twice since then, the most recent in the tournament's last trip to Stanky Field in Mobile in 2004. The Cajuns lost the final qualifier 15-10 to Middle Tennessee.

Middle has been the primary thorn in UL's side since 2003. The Cajuns have lost eight games in the last four double-elimination meets, and the Blue Raiders have been responsible for seven of those losses on the way to a 7-1 mark against UL.

This time, UL won't have to face Middle until the finals. The Cajuns are in a four-team bracket grouping with Troy, UL Monroe and the host Jaguars, with UL and USA locking up in Wednesday's final game at 7:30 p.m. Troy and ULM meet at 4 p.m. in the bracket's other first-round game.

Success before and after the Sun Belt tournament hasn't provided any barometer for success. UL made its first NCAA Super Regional appearance in 1999 and won both the Regional and Super Regional rounds to advance to the College World Series in 2000. In both of those instances, the Cajuns failed to make the Sun Belt finals.

Conversely, when UL finished as tournament runner-up in 1997 and won in 1998, the Cajuns went two-and-out in the NCAA tournament both years. UL lost to Washington (5-4) and Georgia Tech (8-3) in the Starkville Regional in 1997 and fell to Tulane (11-5) and LSU (15-6) in the Baton Rouge Regional in 1998.

Dan McDonald