LSU's Blake Dean hit the game-winning home run Wednesday afternoon.
GEAUX TIGERS. Well it appears that the LSU team that got snubbed earlier today is no fluke!!! What a game!!!! LSU BEATS SOUTH CAROLINA Tigers just beat South Carolina in the first game of the SEC Tourney. So there!!!!! What a special team. I think the fact that no LSU players got picked to be on the ALL SEC team was a huge motivator!!!
One might not think the hottest team in college baseball, a team with a 16-game winning streak and a divisional championship, would still have to prove itself to be legitimate.
Back in the Southeastern Conference tournament after a one-year absence, the LSU Tigers found some extra incentive Tuesday on a single piece of paper.
Not one LSU player received first- or second-team All-SEC honors in voting by the league’s 12 head coaches.
That may have been the perfect motivation for the Tigers heading into a 10 a.m. game today against South Carolina to open the eight-team tournament.
“I think it’s pretty typical of our season,” LSU junior outfielder Nicholas Pontiff said. “People have underestimated us all year. I think it’s only fitting for us not to have any of those honors. It fits in with our season perfectly...........
Pontiff said there was frustration about the All-SEC snub, but not for long.
“When you don’t have individuals on a team, it doesn’t get anybody that mad,” Pontiff said. “I think the whole team would rather win the big picture, the big trophy, instead of having a bunch of individual honors.”......
Mainieri told the Tigers about the all-conference team before they started stretching before practice.
Verdugo quoted Mainieri as saying, “They don’t think we’re good; they think we’re doing this all by mirrors and stuff like that.”
Verdugo considered those words before voicing his own.
“It kind of just makes you want to prove to everyone that we can play a little bit, and this all isn’t just one big fluke,” he said.
The nation’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class helped LSU far exceed its limited success in 2007, Mainieri’s first season as coach of the Tigers. Verdugo is one of the newcomers who has made an impact.
Mainieri said he was stunned to see none of them — or any other LSU player — on the All-SEC team.
“It’s pretty hard for me to imagine that the eighth-best team in the country, according to one poll, and the Western Division champion,” he said, “doesn’t have good enough players to be mentioned on an all-conference team.”
He said he asked his players if they knew the definition of synergy.
“A couple of them answered with a mathematical equation — 2 plus 2 equals 5, or 1 plus 1 equals 3 — and I said, ‘That’s right.’ What it means is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” Mainieri said.
“So, maybe what we are is we’re better than we’re supposed to be. If you add up each of our players, maybe we’re not supposed to be the Western Division champs or the eighth-best team in the country according to that poll, but when you put us all together, maybe we can beat some good teams.”
Verdugo said the Tigers have to put everything behind them, the winning streak, the All-SEC snub, and focus on playing well in the tournament.
“This is where the season really begins,” he said. “We’re 0-and-0.”
Make that 1 AND 0!!!!!
The Advocate Baseball blog has a ton of entries up on the game to keep LSU fans busy till the news stories come out.
Oh too all those Coaches that snubbed the Tigers-
TIGERBAIT SUCKERS!!!!!!
Update- Post game quotes here
Update II - Nice article here on the game
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