Quote:
Originally Posted by mattdavis11
They sure picked a good time to get hot, but it's all for nothing. The canes are far better than any other team in college baseball. Rice might be the only team that can beat Miami.
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I believe it is 5 Nat Championship banners decorating The Box. If the bats & the bullpen stay at the current level, it'll be 6.
From a S. Carolina Newspaperz;
Pardon the LSU Tigers for oozing confidence bordering on invincibility.
They haven’t lost in a month-and-a-half.
Their 23-game winning streak, which included sweeps of the Southeastern Conference tournament and their NCAA regional, is the longest current streak in the country and longest ever by an SEC team.
LSU head coach Paul Mainieri is trying to keep his players grounded, reminding them there’s more work to do. They still must beat an impressive UC Irvine squad in a best-of-three super regional next weekend just to get to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., where eight of the best teams in the country will play for a national title.
Yet Mainieri can’t hide the fact that he is awe-struck by what his team has done only one season after winning 29 games in all of 2007.
“To win 23 games in a row is an amazing accomplishment by a group of young men, but to do it at this time of the year against the schedule we’ve done it against — it’s beyond explanation,” Mainieri said. “Now we’re getting to taste the fruits of victory and they taste very sweet, I might add. ... It’s an amazing thing. It really is. They should be tight but they’re not. They’re just having fun and playing the game.”
The streak has included three-game regular season sweeps of SEC foes South Carolina, Mississippi State, Kentucky and Auburn. Sprinkled in were road victories over in-state rivals Tulane and New Orleans, which both qualified for the NCAA tournament.
At the SEC tournament in Hoover, Ala., LSU beat South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Alabama and Mississippi in succession, needing comebacks to win three of those games.
The Tigers won their regional last weekend with relative ease, starting with a 12-1 win against Texas Southern, followed by victories against Southern Miss of 13-4 and 11-4.
They’ve won with solid starting pitching and excellent relief. They’ve hit for power and for average. They’ve stolen bases and taken the extra base. They’ve made few errors. They’ve made spectacular diving catches, which was perhaps to be expected when they have players like Jared Mitchell, a receiver on LSU’s national championship football team, running down balls in the outfield.
“Great defense, great clutch hitting, great base running, relief pitching, starting pitching,” Mainieri rattled off while describing what has impressed him during the winning streak.
Dean, LSU’s leading hitter with a .351 average, has been the Tigers’ most dangerous hitter in recent weeks.
He was the SEC tournament MVP after batting .438 with three homers, nine RBI and five runs scored in four games. His grand slam highlighted LSU’s 12-8 comeback victory over Alabama and his two-run homer helped LSU beat Mississippi for the tournament championship. He went deep three times during the Baton Rouge regional, when he also hit a towering RBI double and a bases-clearing triple.
He now has 19 home runs on the season, which is second to Matt Clark, whose three homers during the regional gave him 25 to go with a .340 average.
The wisdom of pitching around Dean and Clark is questionable, however. None of LSU’s regulars are hitting below .287 and only two are below .300. Hollander, LSU’s leadoff hitter, and center fielder Leon Landry, who hits eighth, also had homers during the regional, along with pinch hitter Sean Ochinko.
“There’s just no break for the (opposing) pitcher,” Mainieri marveled.
Meanwhile, LSU hitters step to the plate relaxed and confident, content to focus on just getting on base rather than pressing for a big hit.
“There’s really no pressure,” Hollander said. “Somebody’s going to get that big hit. I think we have that in the back of our minds that, hey, if I don’t do it this at-bat, somebody else is going to pick me up.”