The five Louisiana teams involved in NCAA Regional play in New Orleans and Baton Rouge is the most in that small a geographical area since 2002, when there was indeed an all-Louisiana regional played at LSU's Alex Box Stadium.

In that regional, LSU, Tulane, Southern and the University of Louisiana made up the field. Third-seeded UL topped No. 2 seed Tulane 6-3 and then beat top-seeded LSU 5-0 to reach Sunday's final round undefeated, before the host Tigers rallied for two wins to advance to the Super Regional.

In that 2002 event, bad blood boiled over between UL and LSU on that Sunday, with players and UL coach Tony Robichaux ejected, bats flying into dugouts and finger pointing from both sides

"That's past history between the two teams," Robichaux said before his team was placed in the New Orleans regional, and when speculation was high that the Cajuns would be in either Baton Rouge or New Orleans. "I don't know if the fans have let it go over time, but we have players that know their players and they have players that know our players. The goal is to win a regional, not rekindle something that shouldn't have occurred to begin with."


Tickets at Tulane's Turchin Stadium figure to be at a premium this weekend.

Tulane averaged a record 3,604 fans per contest this year and had six of its top 10 single-game attendance marks this season at Turchin Stadium. For the regional, bleachers have been installed down both lines that will bring capacity to 4,200.

The host institution has to make 200 ticket booklets available to each participating school, but UL officials said that those would be used for families of coaches, players and staff members.

Tulane earlier made regional tickets available to its current baseball season ticket holders and current Tulane Athletics Fund members at the $250 level and above. Those had to be purchased by May 25.

However, the school announced Monday that those groups would have an option to buy four additional ticket books beginning today, and sales today and Wednesday would be exclusively for those groups. If any tickets remain after 5 p.m. Wednesday, they will go on sale Thursday at 10 a.m. through TicketMaster outlets.

The NCAA Regionals are set up in a different format this year, with no more than two games played each day and the if-necessary game not scheduled until Monday. In previous years, two games were played Friday, three on Saturday and one or two on Sunday.

Robichaux is a supporter of the new format.

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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com