Tigers to play 4 games in 4 days

BATON ROUGE – No. 2 LSU will get to test its pitching depth as it will play four games in four days at Alex Box Stadium through this weekend.

The Tigers were 6-1 on the season entering a night game Thursday against Southeastern Louisiana that was rescheduled from Wednesday night because of bad weather. Then LSU hosts Princeton in a three-game series at 7 p.m. Friday, 4 p.m. Saturday and noon Sunday. Princeton will be opening the season Friday after going 14-26 overall and 8-12 in the Ivy League last season.

“This will be a little like the postseason,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “It’s a challenge to play four games in four days.”

Mainieri has settled on his weekend rotation for the Southeastern Conference season, which starts two weeks from Friday, and he will use it over the next two weekends. Sophomore left-hander Jared Poche (2-0, 1.54 ERA) will start series openers, followed by freshman right-hander Alex Lange (2-0, 3.60 ERA) and freshman right-hander Jake Godfrey (1-0, 2.08 ERA).

LSU has played Princeton six times, winning four. Princeton won the last meeting, 8-7 in the finale of a three-game series at Alex Box Stadium in 2011. LSU won the first two of that series, 8-2 and 7-2. LSU also played Princeton in a three-game series in 1976 when Mainieri was a freshman outfielder for the Tigers. Princeton won the first game of that series, 4-1, before losing 4-2 and 6-2.