By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
This week, the LSUS baseball team will walk across the street to play in a NAIA postseason tournament. But the goal is to be flying across the country in a couple of weeks to play in another postseason tournament.
The Pilots, ranked No. 4 in the country, are the host team as Shreveport is one of 10 sites in the NAIA regional rounds that get underway today.
The Shreveport Bracket also has Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Lyon College, Loyola (New Orleans), and Fisher College. The first game for the Pilots will be at 6 p.m. today when they take on the winner of the Loyola-Fisher game, which opens the tournament at 11 a.m.
The winner of this regional will advance to the NAIA World Series in Lewiston, Idaho.
Given the gaudy record of LSUS (47-5 overall and 31-2 in the Red River Athletic Conference), it is not a great surprise the Pilots are hosting the tournament, scheduled to last four days.
“The way the NAIA selects (the sites) is based on how your team does during the year, and do you have the facilities to host an event like this,” said Lucas Morgan, the LSUS director of athletics. “Fortunately we are in a good spot to do that. We have the support of the university and the success of the program definitely helped. It kind of felt like a no-brainer that we would host.”
But it is still significant.
“It’s huge for the program and huge for the city,” said Morgan, “when you can bring in four teams from outside the region. It’s going to be high-level baseball. Every team here is a tournament quality team.”
It’s also an unplanned economic boost for the local tourism industry, made possible in part by backing from the Shreveport-Bossier Sports Commission. LSUS also hosted regional competition in 2019 and 2005.
For a team that’s 47-5, it seems strange to say that they are coming into the tournament on a bit of a down note. The Pilots lost both games in the RRAC conference tournament last year – their only two-game losing streak of the year.
But LSUS has won 25 out of 26 games at home this season, so you’ve got to like their chances, especially with pitchers Bobby Vath (12-0, 2.31) and Kevin Miranda (11-1, 1.85).
Try this stat nugget on for size – LSUS has a team ERA of 3.56. Its opponents have an ERA of 12.03 when facing LSUS.
“We’ve had a lot of meetings to prepare for this,” Morgan said. “We are just making sure all the teams coming in are taken care of, (so) we have a member of our staff assigned to each team to serve as a personal liaison. Maybe it’s about a bus or a place to find food. We are really trying to make this as good of an experience as we can for all the teams. We want them to have the national tournament experience.”
There will be a crawfish boil at Pilot Field today, a Military Appreciation Day, with Little League teams being part of the starting lineups as well as expanded food options.
“We’ve really tried to think outside the box,” Morgan said. “We want to give these teams a little bit of a Louisiana experience, but also make sure they go home with memories that will last for a long time.”
Photo courtesy LSUS Athletics
