Road to Sulphur: Bucs back to defend title with No. 1 seed
Published 4:30 pm Monday, April 26, 2021
Warren Arceneaux
The road to the state baseball tournament starts today, with Barbe, the most recent Class 5A champion, among the 34 area teams taking the field in hopes of reaching Sulphur for the state baseball tournament, to be held in Sulphur May 11-15.
Barbe won the 2019 championship, beating Sam Houston 8-2 in an all-Southwest Louisiana final. The Bucs were one of four area teams to win a title that year, joined by Kinder (2A), Oberlin (1A) and Pitkin (B).
Last year, the playoffs were not held due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Bucs (32-2) enter this season as the No. 1 seed and will host No. 32 Denham Springs at 5 p.m. today. Barbe is the only area team to earn a top seed. South Beauregard (3A), Rosepine (2A), Grand Lake (1A) and St. Louis (Division II) all earned second seeds. The Golden Knights finished as the Class 3A runner-up in 2019, while Grand Lake reached the semifinals.
Elsewhere in Class 5A, Sulphur closed the regular season with a pair of wins over Acadiana to earn a home playoff game. The No. 15 Tors (17-17) will host No. 18 Parkway (19-10) at 5 p.m. today. Sam Houston (27-6) is the fourth seed and will open at home against No. 29 Northshore (13-19) at 6 p.m. today.
In Class 3A, the Golden Knights will host No. 31 St. Martinville in the first round at 5:30 p.m. today. Iota is the fourth seed and Iowa is the fifth seed. If seeds hold, those two teams would meet in the quarterfinal round with a trip to the state tournament on the line. Those two schools met Saturday in a softball quarterfinal, with the Yellow Jackets winning 2-1. Iowa reached the semifinals in 2019, losing in extra inning to District 4-3A rival South Beauregard.
St. Louis (19-12) enters the playoffs having won 12 of their last 13 games. The Saints will open with a best 2-of-3 regional round series against No. 15 Patrick Taylor, dates and times to be announced.
District 5-2A mates Rosepine, DeQuincy and Kinder all earned top eight seeds, with the Tigers fourth and Yellow Jackets eighth. In Class 2A, Merryville, a 2019 semifinalist, earned the third seed. They and three other District 4-1A teams, No. 2 Grand Lake, No. 9 East Beauregard and No. 10 Oberlin, earned first round byes.
Barbe’s Crawford Courville makes a catch against Sulphur at McMurray Park on March 27. The Bucs are the No. 1 seed in the Class 5A baseball playoffs.
