LSU to host Lehigh on Friday

BATON ROUGE – The LSU baseball team, America’s No. 1 team for two months according to the polls, lost the No. 1 national seed honor to UCLA on Monday, but settled for the No. 2 overall seed and a chance for a rematch against Houston as the NCAA announced the 64-team field for the postseason.

“Deep down, I was hoping we would get the No. 1 seed because it has never happened before in LSU baseball history,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said after watching the NCAA Selection Show with his team, family and friends and media at the Champions Club in Alex Box Stadium.

“I thought we were probably deserving of it. You can’t argue with UCLA either. They’re a great program,” Mainieri said. “I told our players, whether we were No. 1 or No. 8, it really didn’t matter because all you have to do is be a national seed in order to have the advantages of a national seed. There are no more opinions. You just have to go out on the field, and you have to earn everything that you get.”

LSU (48-10) will play Lehigh (25-29) at 3 p.m. Friday in Alex Box on the SEC Network. The winner will play at 8 p.m. Saturday against the winner of Friday’s 7 p.m. game between Tulane (34-23) and North Carolina-Wilmington (39-16).

Since LSU is a national top eight seed, it will get to host the best-of-three Super Regional round June 5-8 in Alex Box if it wins this NCAA Regional. That would be against the winner of the NCAA Houston Regional, where Houston (42-18) plays Houston Baptist (28-25) and Louisiana-Lafayette (39-21) plays Rice (35-20). Houston became the first team in more than two decades to eliminate LSU from an NCAA Regional last season when the Cougars beat the Tigers, 5-4, in 11 innings and 12-2 in the championship game. The eight Super Regional winners advance to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, June 13-24.

“It’ll be a dream come true if we get to play Houston in the Super Regional with a chance to go to Omaha,” said LSU shortstop Alex Bregman, who on Monday won the Skip Bertman Award that goes to the Tigers’ best overall player in honor of the former LSU baseball coach. “That would be awesome because they beat us last year. But first, we have to beat a very good Lehigh team.”