The two-week marathon in Omaha has just gotten started, so it's far too early to make any predictions or stand too firmly behind any analysis.That said, LSU has The Look. Ever since Matty Ott slammed the door on Virginia in the ninth inning to close out that 9-5 gem Saturday night I've been trying to get this song out of my head. It was catchy 25 years ago, and it's even more so now.
Saturday night's Tiger team looked like a national champion. And not because they were at their best; they were good but not off-the-hook good.
No, LSU looks like a team which can win this thing because on Saturday they were able to withstand the fact they couldn't just ride Anthony Ranaudo's arm to victory like they've done for the last month like clockwork when he's taken the hill.
Ranaudo didn't have good stuff at all. He loaded the bases with one out in the fourth with two runs already in and Tiger head coach Paul Mainieri decided he'd seen enough. Paul Bertuccini saved his bacon with a strikeout and a terrific Ryan Schimpf catch in left; his line of 3 1/3 innings, five hits, two runs, four walks and three strikeouts might otherwise have looked a whole lot worse.
But Ranaudo only threw 80 pitches in the Virginia game, which is a very light outing for him and enables him to get right back on the horse in Game Three, even if that's a loser's bracket game on Wednesday should the Tigers not beat Arkansas in two days. Ranaudo isn't likely to look that ordinary again. If he's pitching on Friday with LSU in the winner's bracket, the big guy should be very sharp. Winning a game despite an off night from a guy who rarely has one is always a reason to be excited.
LSU didn't have Ranaudo's A-game, but they managed to get the job done anyway. That brings us to another reason this team has The Look - the guy in the dugout.
Mainieri had the Golden Touch on Saturday. His decision to get Ranaudo out of the game in the fourth inning was quite likely what won the game for LSU. Bertuccini getting out of that inning without giving up any runs was a massive factor in the game. Yes, Bertuccini turned tomato can in the fifth and Virginia got two runs to take the lead, but he managed to come up big for LSU when they needed him. Mainieri then had the right answer for Virginia's outburst in the fifth; Austin Ross came in with two guys on and the game perhaps about to get out of hand, and he got the strikeout when the Tigers had to have it.
Then in the seventh, when Ross was starting to get into trouble Mainieri had the right touch again. He brought in Chad Jones ostensibly to face a left-hander with a man on and two out after Franco Valdes had homered to bring the game within one. Jones actually walked the lefty, but Mainieri left him in to face a right-hander and he got the out to get LSU to the eighth with the lead.
Those pitching moves were just plain brilliant. Mainieri went through six hurlers and he got what he needed from all of them but Ranaudo - and even Ranaudo was able to get out of trouble in two of the four innings he worked.
Reason Three? The bats. LSU pounded out 14 hits against a team which entered Saturday's action allowing just a .234 average. That's 14-of-35 on the night (.400) with a pair of homers and a couple of doubles. And it wasn't just the stats; LSU got the big hit when they needed it. They got a two-out RBI from Micah Gibbs, who has been flat-out clutch ever since coming out of a slump the first half of the season, to open the scoring. Then they got a three-run bomb from Sean Ochinko, who hasn't homered since March, after Virginia had taken the lead. Then Ryan Schimpf stuck the dagger in Virginia in the eighth, blasting a two-run homer into the seats in right for his 20th homer of the season to put the game away.
I don't know if I'd call it a workmanlike effort. It was a little bit flashier than that. But it wasn't what you'd call a signature win.
LSU just wasn't that much better than Virginia tonight. They couldn't seem to put the Wahoos away until the very last part of the game, and in several key moments this one could easily have gotten away from the Tigers.
But that's Reason Four. This team's Omaha experience, forged last year when they hung around to at least win a game and stay for the better part of a week, was clearly in evidence. They knew what they needed to do, they were composed and when they got their opportunity to stick it in and break it off that's exactly what they did. And that, more than anything else, gives them The Look.
Saturday was a tough game against a tough opponent, one who went to Cal-Irvine and beat Steven Strasburg, knocked off the host team there and then outlasted a good Ole Miss team in three grueling games in Oxford. But LSU maintained command and put the game away when they got the opportunity. It was the kind of thing you'd expect from a club which isn't just happy to be in Omaha; these guys have had Zesto's milkshakes and they've barflied at Barrett's and they're in town for a business trip.
Monday night's Arkansas game could always go wrong, and in a tough event like this you never know what might happen. But so far the Tigers have The Look. And when you've got The Look, you usually go far.
Excerpted from Eye on the Tigers - Your Inside source to Tigers Athletics
CWS Game 2. LSU/UVA 
Linear Mode
