Scooter Hobbs

LSU baseball has a pulse.

It may be faint, but taking two out of three games at Kentucky last weekend might have been a start in digging out of the huge hole the Tigers fell in out of the gates in the Southeastern Conference race.

With every team having virtually everybody back from last year’s abbreviated season, this wasn’t a good year to mess with the SEC, not when seemingly all of your best players are freshmen or kids who didn’t get to experience last year’s conference wringer of the schedule.

It’s also not a year to be struggling to hit “good” pitching, of which the conference has it in abundance this go-round.

Granted, college baseball has too many polls, but five SEC teams have been ranked No. 1 in at least one of them at some point this season.

LSU isn’t one of them, of course, but the Tigers are hardly the Bad News Bears.

There’s plenty of statistical evidence to explain a 3-9 SEC record, upgraded from 1-8 before the Kentucky trip.

In SEC games, the Tigers rank 13th in batting average, runs and hits, 10th in ERA and fielding percentage.

But it’s not like they’re kicking it around. What they’re not doing are the little things that decide close games.

They’re third in the nation in home runs with 52, which is fortunate because it seems it’s the only way they can score at times.

Second and third with one out seems to be where Tigers go to languish these days.

Pitching has been up and down, mostly good at the start, but something of a Forrest Gump box of chocolates out of the bullpen.

Every ninth-inning lead seemingly has to survive the dreaded leadoff walk while hit batsmen seem to happen when you least expect it or can afford it.

It’s not awful in the field, but the Tigers rarely make a play out of the ordinary. And when they do, it seems to turn out like Mitchell Sanford’s diving catch at Kentucky, where a Wildcat tags up

and scores — from second base.

So there is perhaps a snake-bit factor too.

But all is not lost.

Right now it’s all a matter of whether LSU (20-12) can rally over the final 18 conference games and do enough to reach the NCAA Tournament.

It’s not so far-fetched.

Hard to imagine the Tigers will even go through the motions of bidding on an NCAA regional host site, traditionally known as the arrival of hard summer in Baton Rouge.

Those bids go out earlier than normal this year — another COVID-19 precaution of some sort — so the Tigers, even if they had the means to earn one, probably don’t have the time.

But making the NCAA Tournament is still out there as a carrot on stick.

The résumé isn’t as bad as one might think.

Their ratings percentage index is No. 26, which sounds like a lock, but if it the 64-team tournament field was announced today I doubt the committee would look favorably on a team tied for 12th (with Texas A&M) in its own conference (ahead of 1-11 Auburn).

The relatively high RPI is likely based on the nation’s sixth-toughest schedule, courtesy mostly of the early conference games.

They’ve already played series against No. 2 Vanderbilt (which was No. 1 when it swept the Tigers in Baton Rouge), No. 4 Tennessee and No. 5 Mississippi State.

The strength of schedule won’t suffer much this week when the Tigers host No. 11 South Carolina.

But it’s just a garden-variety SOS signal if you don’t beat some of them.

Bet you didn’t know that the lone ranked team out of conference LSU has played is No. 14 Louisiana Tech, which the Tigers beat 16-7, and will play again in Ruston later in the season.

Kentucky was better than its non-ranking and maybe it was a start.

LSU head coach Paul Mainieri has adopted the common ploy of “taking them one game at time” to gradually tidy up the eyesore of a conference record.

That’s his right, probably prudent, but you are under no such restraints.

So these next three weeks will tell the tale.

After South Carolina, LSU goes to No. 6 Ole Miss and then hosts No. 1 Arkansas.

Tough, yes, but that’s the kind of company the LSU program expects to be a part of, not just visiting and hosting.

Anyway, then it lightens up with the final three weekends at Auburn, at home against Alabama and at Texas A&M.

If by then LSU is still sweating out finishing 12th or better just to get into the SEC Tournament, the Tigers can probably forget about the NCAA version.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.comScooter Hobbs updated