So, it's Arkansas.

LSU will play Arkansas at 1 p.m. Friday at the College World Series. An LSU victory would put the Tigers in the best-of-three championship series beginning Monday.

An Arkansas victory Friday would give the Razorbacks another shot Saturday, with the winner of that game advancing to the championship series.

The Tigers went to bed after their 9-1 victory Monday night against Arkansas not knowing who their next opponent would be. The mystery lasted until Wednesday night, when the Razorbacks rallied with two runs in the ninth to force extra innings against Virginia, winning 4-3 in the 12th inning.

So, it's Arkansas.

What does that mean? For one thing, familiarity. What does that breed? Contempt, the saying goes. Sometimes familiarity leads to complacency. Sometimes, it's the perfect recipe.

If the comments from Virginia and Arkansas coaches and players after Wednesday's elimination game are any indication, the losers bracket featured two teams known for battling down to the end. The game certainly made it seem that way.

“This game took everything from Arkansas. It took everything from Virginia,” said Virginia coach Brian O'Connor, who had the Cavaliers in the CWS for the first time.

Arkansas head coach Dave Van Horn echoed the theme.

“It was just a great ball game to be a part of as a coach. Roller coaster. Those were tough kids that didn’t want to go home,” he said.

Van Horn was soon asked the all-important question that follows every coach and team through the losers bracket: What about your pitching staff?

“We’ve got some guys -- maybe not the guys that would be pitching for us on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (in the regular season),” he said. “We need to find a way to score some runs. We are thin, though.”

The game did not seem to surprise Van Horn, nor anyone who has followed the Razorbacks.

“I kept saying we’ve been doing this all year. The way you saw our team play today is what we’ve been doing all year,” Van Horn said.

Before the early-May series between LSU and Arkansas in Fayetteville, he talked about the makeup of his club.

“I think our guys just battle,” Van Horn said before the series, which LSU won two games to one. “We have a solid team. We don’t have a great, great team. We have a team that just shows up and plays, and they play hard. If you look at our numbers offensively, it’s not great overall -- it’s pretty average -- but it just seems like somebody steps up and gets it done one game here, one game there.”

He'd get no argument from those who've watched his Razorbacks in the NCAA tournament.

Tennessee coach Todd Raleigh also talked about the LSU-Arkansas matchup in May before it happened, and he seemed conflicted.

“LSU is dynamic,” Raleigh said. “You look up and down that lineup, you look at some of the weekend starters, and they’ve got some guys that are pretty good. Arkansas, on the other hand, is maybe not as dynamic, but I tell you what: Arkansas plays good baseball.

“I’m going to leave it at LSU’s a little more dynamic, but I love the way Arkansas plays,” he said later. “They don’t have one thing, to me, that sticks out that they don’t do well. They’ve got a good closer, and LSU’s got a good closer. They both have good weekend starters. They just know how to win.”

So, LSU and Arkansas traveled to Nebraska and will play each other for the second time in Omaha. It could turn into a three-game series of sorts.

It's easy to speculate about the familiarity factor. Digging deep into the archives, I thought about the 1978 high school football season and my senior year at St. Louis Catholic in Lake Charles. Those Saints won playoff games against Mamou, Church Point and Winnfield (coached by Larry Dauterive) before advancing to a semifinal matchup against Reggie Reginelli and Newman.

The winner would meet the winner of the Kinder-John Curtis semifinal being played the same night in suburban New Orleans. Curtis was this on-the-rise Class 2A program we'd been hearing about for a few years, a prep team that looked like the New England Patriots and had an unheard-of depth chart for a school its size.

Kinder was the team down the road, an easy drive from Lake Charles, a team we'd played before and knew well. Kinder had about 15 or 16 players who saw the field, with most of them two-way players. There was nothing glamorous about Kinder.

The presumption was "Win and face John Curtis."

St. Louis defeated Newman with a late touchdown. Moments later, we found out Curtis lost. It would be St. Louis vs. Kinder for the state championship, in Kinder.

Kinder?

Call me crazy, but I think Kinder won the state championship at that moment. It seemed like a school-wide letdown. No shot at the Patriots.

We're playing Kinder?

Trinion Smith returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, and Kinder was never seriously threatened.

But I digress. Sort of.

You wonder if it would be more interesting, more compelling, more motivating for LSU players to see someone other than Arkansas. LSU is 3-1 against the Razorbacks this season.

Motivation? Think about Arkansas players. You know they're glad for another shot at the Tigers. They talked about wanting to play LSU again within minutes of losing to the Tigers in the second-round game.

The familiarity thing can be funny. It wasn't until this morning that I saw the 1978 state championship matchup in a different light (being biased has a way of making it hard to see both sides). I realized it's entirely possible Kinder players, after defeating John Curtis in the semis, found out we beat Newman and said to each other, "St. Louis? We're playing St. Louis?"

And then they went out and beat us.

What does it all mean? Probably not much in the grand scheme of things. But we're always looking for angles and clues and foreshadowing, aren't we?

It's Arkansas. We know that.

Does it matter?

A shot in the national championship series is at stake. That would seem to be motivation enough.

That won't stop most of us from overanalyzing Friday's matchup right up until the first pitch -- and beyond. It's a big part of why it's fun.

Just to feed the monster, consider: LSU is 22-6 in day games. Arkansas is 23-14.

LSU is 8-1 in neutral-site games. Arkansas is 5-3.

My take? Over the long haul, LSU is the better team. On any given day or night, well, you know the rest of it. Arkansas can beat the Tigers -- and did so, convincingly, in the first game of their drizzly series in May.

Have the Razorbacks come through the losers bracket intact enough to beat LSU twice, Friday and Saturday? I have my doubts. Arkansas hasn't seen Anthony Ranaudo at anything near his best, and by the second or third time through the order in a possible Saturday game, the Razorbacks would be piecing it together with all sorts of dugout voodoo, with rally caps and the like probably a necessary part of the game plan.

Paul Mainieri is good about keeping the focus on his players and having them keep the focus on their performance, their techniques, their game. If the Tigers maintain that type of vision, the familiarity with Arkansas will be just window dressing.

It's essentially an SEC game with national championship implications. I wonder if that makes it better or worse for the fans.

If it affects the players, their minds are not right.

So, it's Arkansas. What do you think that means?

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Carl Dubois has covered LSU sports on a regular basis since 1999. You can contact Carl by writing carl1061 'at' gmail.com.