JOURNAL SPORTS
STERLINGTON – It’s impossible to do any better than the LSUS baseball team did in the regular season. They hope to do better than they did last year in this weekend’s Red River Athletic Conference Tournament.
Ranked No. 1 nationally in the NAIA Top 25, the undefeated (47-0) Pilots open play today at the Sterlington Sports Complex against the league’s eighth-place team, Hutson-Tillotson, in a 5 p.m. contest. The tournament has two four-team pods in a double elimination format until winners emerge on each side of the bracket and collide in a Sunday afternoon championship game.
Last year, Louisiana College pulled off a surprise and won the RRAC Tournament. The Wildcats are one of three teams who have played LSUS close this season, and all three are in the other bracket, joined by UH-Victoria and A&M-Texarkana. LSUS edged LCU 5-4 on March 1 and posted two-run wins over Texarkana (also winning by three in another of that series) and blanked UH-Victoria 2-0 on April 19.
LSU Alexandria, the RRAC’s fifth seed, and fourth-seeded Our Lady of the Lake meet today at 1 in the first game of the tournament, being played on artificial turf.
The Pilots completed a dominant regular season with a 3-0 series sweep over Jarvis Christian College, outscoring the Bulldogs 44-12 and racking up 49 hits across the series.
Their 47 straight wins are the most in college baseball history by a four-year college team.
LSUS is led by Red River Athletic Conference Player of the Year Josh Gibson, who has posted video game-like numbers. Gibson enters the tournament with a staggering .441 batting average, 71 hits, 58 RBIs, a .545 on-base percentage, and a .671 slugging percentage in 161 at-bats.
The Pilots boast the most dominant pitching staff in the NAIA. They lead the country in ERA (2.22), strikeouts (439), strikeouts per nine innings (10.93), and WHIP (0.96). The staff is anchored by RRAC Pitcher of the Year Isaac Rohde, who is 12-0 with a 1.84 ERA, 0.69 WHIP, and 114 strikeouts over 88 innings pitched.
Their first-round opponent, Huston-Tillotson (18-29), enters the tournament after a 2-1 series win over LSU Alexandria.
All RRAC Tournament games will be streamed live at Sterlington Sports Complex All-Access