In Unison Now, "We're #7! We're #7!"

While Poseur is recovering from his Mennonite wedding issues, I'll be filling in to give you my decidedly amateur take on LSU baseball.  To tell you how amateur, I saw my first LSU games in about 2 years this past weekend.  I enjoyed the heck out of them, and I think I'm beginning to get a handle on this baseball thing, but I am but a pale imitation of the expertise that is Poseur.

After the jump.

After all the debate about which of the two most accomplished SEC teams would get a national seed, regular season champs Georgia and conference tournament champs LSU both got a national seeding.  We are #7 and Georgia is #8.  

That means that we are hosting a regional, and if we advance past the regional, we host the super regional.  That means it's nothing but home games from here until we reach Rosenblatt Stadium.

In this regional, we are of course the #1 seed, and we start off on Friday against #4 seed Texas Southern.  After that, we get either #2 seed Southern Miss or #3 seed New Orleans.

I am not about to even try to give a comprehensive overview of any of our opponents.  However, one thing is very striking about one particular team.  Southern Miss has that one thing that every top-rated team fears in going against a mid-level opponent.  They have one great pitcher.  

Pitcher Barry Bowden is that ace of the staff that can carry a mid-range team past a top seed on the right night.  He has a miniscule 1.62 ERA, which is less than half the ERA of Ryan Verdugo or Jared Bradford.  Fortunately, we don't get Southern Miss first, and maybe we'll miss him.  If they save Bowden for the second game, and manage to get past the first without him (or if LSU and USM both lose their first games), we will draw him as an opponent.  That could be rough going.

The rest of the analysis I will leave to my able-bodied colleague.