I hope we can overcome the Owl's jinx and beat them in our super-regional. Both our pitching and hitting are looking pretty good at this point.

Tuesday, LSU head coach Paul Mainieri said Anthony Ranaudo would probably be his Friday pitcher, with Louis Coleman available in relief if needed. Ranaudo threw 130 pitches and went nine innings to beat Baylor 3-2 in a 10-inning nailbiter Saturday; he'll be working on six days' rest. The coach withheld a final decision until today.


"I'm probably going to stick with what we've been doing (in the regular season, when Ranaudo was the Friday starter) but I'll make that final decision tomorrow," Mainieri told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "I would guess we'd have Coleman available on Friday if we do that in case we want to use him out of the pen. Just take them one game at a time."


LSU's head coach intimated that he was leaning toward starting Coleman for Saturday's game. Certainly if LSU were to lose on Friday with Ranaudo on the mound, starting Coleman would be an imperative.


If the Tigers win the Friday game, however, one wonders whether a bit of gamesmanship isn't in order whereby Mainieri would start Austin Ross in the Saturday game. Ross' strong performance against Southern in last week's regional, coupled with a quality start in the loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament, would indicate he could keep the Tigers in a game until the later innings - and if LSU was leading, Coleman could come in as a middle-relief option to either close out the game (and the series with it) or at least hold Rice down until Matty Ott could finish it.


Of course, all this would depend on how Rice's pitching stacks up. The Houston Chronicle reported that junior righty Mike Ojala, the Owls' normal Friday starter, has been pitching through a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow for the last month now. Ojala's effectiveness hasn't appeared to drop off much; in his last appearance he went seven innings, giving up seven hits and one run, walking two and striking out four to earn the win in a 5-2 victory over Sam Houston State. The start before that was against Houston in the Conference USA tournament, and Ojala was reasonably effective that day. He went 5 2/3 innings, surrendering five hits and two runs while walking four and striking out five.


Ojala is 5-0 for the season with a 1.73 ERA. He's walked 24 and struck out 68 in 62 1/3 innings. Opponents hit .248 against him. The Chronicle said Ojala has dealt with swelling and pain in his elbow after each start, but he said it starts to feel strong just as he's about to make another start.



"If anything, he's a better pitcher," Graham said. "His velocity is slightly down. But under the influence of the playoffs, maybe they'll be back up where they were. Regardless, he can pitch. He can get them out."
Graham wouldn't commit to bringing Ojala out first against LSU, though. "We are still discussing it," he told the Chronicle. "We still need to check how he feels. He keeps recovering from it, but I'm not sure how many times he can keep doing that."



Rice's other two weekend starters are Ryan Berry (7-1, 2.00 ERA), a projected top three round pick in next week's draft, and Taylor Wall (7-5, 3.45 ERA), a freshman lefty who has been the workhorse of the Owl staff this year. Wall might seem to be the smart call for the Owls given LSU's history of struggling against left-handed pitching - the Tigers are 18-13 against lefties, though they've won the last four games in which they've faced a southpaw starter. He threw a complete game shutout (114 pitches) in Rice's 8-0 win over Kansas State on Sunday night, though, so rest could be something of an issue.



Berry was the starter and loser in Rice's 7-6 defeat at Kansas State's hands Saturday (125 pitches), and came back Monday to throw two innings and 21 pitches in relief.



It's tempting to say Rice will go with Wall-Berry-Ojala this weekend, but Graham is still kicking it around. He might reverse that order. Or he might send Berry up against Ranaudo on Friday.



Either way, the series is shaping up to be a war. It pits the No. 1 team in both major polls against a club ranked either sixth or seventh. That matchup is far and away the toughest of any this weekend.