Not your regular Joe this time

Published 5:21 am Thursday, March 9, 2017

Everybody seemed to have a grand old time at Joe Miller Ballpark Wednesday night.

Everybody in blue and gold, that is.

It’s not every day you get the LSU baseball program in.

Better take advantage of it — which McNeese did with a 5-4 victory over Flagship U.

Good game.

They ought to do it again sometime soon, and Wednesday just proved that …

Actually, lots of luck, Cowboys, in getting the Tigers back here anytime soon.

McNeese’s win over LSU left the Tigers looking as frustrated as they’ve been in a while.

LSU head coach Paul Mainieri was spitting postgame nails, not over the hospitality involved certainly, but suggesting that his own team might run wind sprints all the way back to Baton Rouge.

It had been five years since the last LSU visit here. Maybe the Tigers didn’t know what they were getting into.

But if you’re keeping score at home, that’s now a 6-3 record for the Cowboys against LSU in Lake Charles on those rare occasions when they can lure the Tigers to our corner of the state.

It wasn’t the best played game you ever saw, but it was close throughout, which is what you hope for when a game has a big buildup.

It wasn’t the kind of low-scoring game that you would have expected the hard-hitting Cowboys to flourish in, given that the pitching has sometimes been erratic.

But McNeese clearly outplayed LSU even though the Tigers outhit the Cowboys 12-7 and were error-free as opposed to two Cowboys errors.

The Tigers had one of the quieter 12-hit nights you’ll see, none of it doing much damage.

On the other hand, both of the Cowboys’ home runs, in the unlikely event that they’ve landed yet, likely alighted somewhere near I-210.

But other than the two bombs, both by Mitchell Rogers, McNeese had to nitpick its way to a 5-3 lead.

They played that game, too, but Rogers’ second towering blast in the bottom of the eighth was especially timely, an insurance run that came in quite handy when LSU scored one in the top of the ninth and got the tying run to third with two outs before local Tiger Beau Jordan, who drove in the first run, grounded out on a bang-bang play to end the game.

McNeese now takes some momentum for the start of conference play into Central Arkansas this weekend.

LSU, which lost a second consecutive game for the first time this season and its third of the last four overall, is still fighting its way out of an offensive funk that wasn’t much better last week.

What the Tigers didn’t have in Lake Charles was any excuses.

It wasn’t like McNeese got bottom-of-the-barrell Tigers pitching for the midweek game.

After all, it’s the Cowboys who open conference play this week while the Tigers can still tinker one more weekend with a non-league game against Wichita State.

The LSU starter, freshman Zach Hess, was still under consideration for the Tigers’ Sunday starting role.

He didn’t help his cause with the shortest outing of his young career, mainly betrayed by four walks in 22⁄3 innings while giving up McNeese’s first three runs.

Caleg Gilbert, who’s been the most reliable Tiger out of the bullpen, was summoned in the eighth to try to keep it a tie game.

The Cowboys nicked him a safety-squeeze bunt to take the lead, but there wasn’t much doubt that insurance home run.

It’s just one game and certainly isn’t going to define either team’s season.

But there was more than a game at work here Wednesday.

There was an event.

The game set a stadium attendance record of 2,821, even without offering seating (at-your-own-risk) on top of the dugouts like they did for one of LSU’s previous appearances at this yard.

But McNeese may be on to something here.

Mainly a home-field advantage.

Sure, there were tons of LSU fans on hand. The Tigers don’t go anywhere, certainly in Louisiana, without a strong backing.

They’ve been to Lake Charles so infrequently in recent years — just once since 2000 until Wednesday night — that it’s hard to remember details of previous trips.

But it seemed like McNeese had an actual home-crowd advantage for this one.

That hasn’t always been the case for LSU Night in Lake Charles.

Even figuring the gold fanwear was up for grabs or neutral, at least from a distance, it looked like more blue than purple in attendance.

Or maybe the Tiger fans were all tucked away in the ballpark’s third-base line beer garden to enjoy an amenity not available over at Alex Box.

But the reaction to the game’s ebbs and flows seemed to confirm that.

If so, McNeese’s impressive upgrades to what is fondly known now as the “Jeaux” were well worth it.

Of course, it was nothing new that McNeese prevailed over Flagship U. after getting the Tigers.

The difference was that the majority of the crowd seemed to go home happy about it.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com