NEW ORLEANS - Even with the pre-tournament talk surrounding the pitching matchups, it's likely this weekend's survivor of the NCAA Baseball Tournament's New Orleans Regional will do so because of offense.

That's what players on both teams expect tonight when Louisiana's Ragin' Cajuns make their first NCAA appearance in three seasons, facing second-seeded Alabama at 6:30 p.m. at Tulane's Turchin Stadium.

The Cajuns (47-17) are the tournament's third seed, a position nobody expected at the start of May when UL was 38-9. In May, the Cajuns slumped to 9-8, and it was that drop that probably made this regional one of the nation's toughest.

"We're the ones that threw the kink into this thing," said Cajun coach Tony Robichaux on Thursday. "We played ourselves down into a three, which we're probably not, and that made this one very tough. When we hosted the regional in 2000, it was not nearly this tough."

It certainly didn't have a team of Tulane's status, with the No. 1-ranked Green Wave (50-9) facing state rival Southern (29-15) in today's 2:30 p.m. opener. Winners and losers match up in Saturday's games at 2:30 and 6:30 p.m., and survivors will play for a super regional berth on Sunday and, if necessary, Monday.

That 2000 regional may not have had a visiting team as good as the Tide (38-21), which spent the first half of the SEC season in first place before stumbling toward the end. Alabama officials were expecting a host position for one of the 16 regionals, but a 1-2 finish in the SEC Tournament scuttled those plans.

Now, they'll bring one of the South's most solid pitching staffs into today's game, and the Cajuns aren't fooled by the 4-5 season record of sophomore southpaw and probable starter Wade LeBlanc.

"Alabama's built on good pitching," said Cajun senior first baseman Phillip Hawke. "They've always been strong. It's important for us, when we get base runners, we get them in."

The rest of the story

Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com