Jim Mashek

WILDCATS STILL LOOKING FOR FIRST BERTH IN COLLEGE WORLD SERIES; PRESSURE IS SQUARELY ON THE BACKS OF SEVENTH-RANKED TIGERS

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — The University of Kentucky Wildcats turned out on a brutal, searing Friday afternoon at LSU’s famed Alex Box Stadium, where the seventh-ranked Tigers have won scores of championships and the visiting teams are usually playing with house money.

No pressure.

Shoot the moon.

Let it all hang out, homeslice.

This is old hat, of course, for LSU (46-15 overall) and its second-year coach, Jay Johnson. The Tigers are just a few days removed from a typically dominant performance in a four-team NCAA regional, also at Alex Box Stadium, while Kentucky (40-19) is still riding high after staring elimination straight in the face at Lexington’s Kentucky Proud Park.

LSU and Kentucky open a best-of-three series on Saturday at Alex Box, with the winner advancing to next week’s College World Series at Charles Schwab Field in downtown Omaha, Nebraska. First pitch is scheduled for 2 p.m. CDT.

(EDITOR’s NOTE: THE THREAT OF THUNDERSTORMS IN THE BATON ROUGE AREA HAS PUSHED FIRST PITCH BACK TO 7:05 P.M. ,,. AND THEN, 8:05 … AND NOW, AT 9:06, WE’RE PLAYIN’ BALL …)

It’s no surprise that LSU is back in this position. In fact, it was expected. Anything less would have been seen as an abject failure.

That’s not the case, of course, with UK coach Nick Mingoine’s Wildcats. They are by no means “happy to be there,” even if they actually are, but they’re facing imposing odds at making school history in perhaps the most hostile college environment known to man.

It’s hot, it’s crowded, the ball sails out of there. The Tigahs seldom lose there, too, going 31-7 this season at this venue on their way to becoming a national seed for the 64-team tournament.

Johnson succeeded longtime LSU coach Paul Mainieri last year, and Alex Box Stadium has all the trappings and tradition of a college baseball powerhouse over the last four decades.

The Tigers may have the first two players chosen in Major League Baseball’s amateur draft, which isn’t exactly new, either, as LSU pitcher Ben McDonald was the No. 1 pick in the 1989 draft, going to the Baltimore Orioles, and Alex Bregman, the gifted third baseman of the MLB champion Houston Astros, who joined the team the year after the Astros made him the second overall pick in 2015.

This year, it’s 6-foot-7 LSU right-hander Paul Skenes, and Tigers teammate Dylan Crews, a five-tool corner outfielder who hits for average (a .438 clip), power (17 home runs) and slugging percentage (.736, get outta my way) …

Different MLB mock drafts have Crews and Skenes going in different spots in first five or six spots for the MLB draft later this month, but analysts seem to agree they’re going to go off the board quickly, and possibly even the first two selections.

Heady stuff, to be sure.

LSU tailed off, just a smidge, down the final three weeks of regular-season play, dropping two of three games to SEC rivals Auburn and Mississippi State. The Tigahs flamed fairly quickly in last month’s SEC Tournament, too, going 1-2 with losses to Texas A&M and Arkansas before returning to Baton Rouge to get ready for the tournament(s) that actually count.

They are, in ascending order of importance — at least in these parts — the four-team regional tournament, the two-team, best-of-3 super regional, and the eight-team, double-elimination College World Series. It’s a natural order of things in Red Stick.

LSU has almost made a ritual of reaching the College World Series, and Tigers outfielder Cade Beloso made note of that in Friday’s press conferences outside Alex Box Stadium. On 18 occasions — let me repeat that, EIGHTEEN — the Tigers have made the trip to Omaha.

All of them have taken place since 1986, my second year of covering the team for the Baton Rouge morning newspaper. The most recent breakthrough, however, was in 2017, and that’s an ETERNITY for this success-starved LSU fan base, especially now that they’re loaded for bear to make it No. 19 in the next two or three days …

Which is pretty much expected.

“I’m going to try to not get too emotional. I’m going to miss my teammates the most,” Beloso said. “We’ve been blessed to have such a great team this year, really for the last five years, the opportunity to play with some awesome dudes …

“(I) would take all the ups and downs 10 years in a row. I would do this all over again in a heartbeat. I’m embracing all of the emotions.”

One of them, of course, is handling the pressure. And it’s on.

LSU’s Alex Box Stadium/Skip Bertman Field has been standing for little more than a decade, but it’s got all the bells and whistles of a big-time college baseball setting. There’s a statue of Bertman himself, celebrating the five national championships they’ve won under his tutelage, and the 84-year-old LSU legend is expected to be in attendance at this weekend’s games.

Kentucky, meanwhile, has yet to reach the College World Series. And the Wildcats certainly got here the hard way, as seventh-year coach Nick Mingoine admitted.

In NCAA regional play, nearby Big Ten rival Indiana University knocked Kentucky into the losers’ bracket of their four-team regional, on June 3 at UK’s Kentucky Pride Park. The Wildcats had to defeat West Virginia University, which they did, 10-0, before they’d even get a SHOT at settling their score with the hated Hoosiers from the north side of the Ohio River.

“We had our backs against the wall,” Mangoine said. “We had our backs against the wall for three games. We had to play three games in a span of 30 hours or so …

“Our team is a confident team. You’re not going to get this deep into the tournament if you don’t have confidence.”

True dat.

After eliminating West By God, Migoine’s Wildcats squared off, again, with the Hoosiers, and buried them, 16-6. That set up the proverbial winner-takes-all game, and this time, in a tense one with plenty of twists and turns, Kentucky advanced to the super regionals with a 4-2 victory over IU.

The ‘Cats are making history and they’ve got a chance to make some more.

“(Kentucky) played five games last weekend, so that’s a little bit of an advantage for us,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said.

“When you get in a competitive environment, you never want your team to back down,” Mingione said. “But I looked at it, when the season began, we had one player on our entire roster who had played in an NCAA Tournament.”

And now the free-swinging Wildcats get their shot at LSU and 6-foot-7 right-hander Paul Skenes, a hard thrower with an interesting back story.

Skenes was enrolled at the Air Force Academy before he had a late growth spurt and started to approach 100 mph on his fastball.

He did the logical thing.

He challenged himself through the NCAA transfer portal, and the rest is history.

Skenes has gone 11-2 this season in 16 games, all starts. He’s sporting an impressive 1.90 ERA, and in 99 1/3 innings pitched, he’s struck out 179 batters.

Wait, it gets better.

Skenes also has walked just 17 batters over that same span. Opponents are batting a mere .171 against him. Simply put, he’s a dominant pitcher.

Kentucky is expected to counter with 6-foot-4 right-hander Zack Lee, a senior right-hander from Effingham, Illinois. Lee is 5-3 on the season with a sturdy 3.74 ERA. His numbers are far more pedestrian than Skenes’ … but then they’re supposed to be.

This is the Kentucky team that strolled into Bowling Green in late March with an impressive 18-1 record. First-year WKU coach Marc Rardin’s squad bolted to a 4-0 lead and held it through six innings, before disaster struck for the home team.

UK’s Jackson Gray. the leadoff man and a former WKU center fielder, unloaded a grand slam to right field in the seventh inning, sending the Wildcats to a dramatic 10-8 victory over the Hilltoppers.

The ‘Cats went a modest 16-14 against SEC competition, but when you think about it, that’s pretty damn good, given the league’s dominance on the national landscape.

UK found its mojo last weekend in Lexington, when I was up that way covering the KHSAA state tournaments in both baseball and softball. The Wildcats have hit 51 home runs this season, compared to LSU’s 126. They’re batting .293, compared to LSU’s .314. That’s a significant difference.

Yet, for three hours today, and then another three (or so) in the next day or two, the Wildcats will have a chance to do something really special.

Defy the odds, as imposing as they may be, and play your way to Omaha.

Near the end of Nick Mingoine’s press conference on Friday, I piped up from the back of the crowd and asked him if he thought the Wildcats were playing with house money.

Mingoine shot me a crooked grin and said:

“I’ll kind of leave that up to you guys.”

Good stuff. Should be fun.