The Hayride: LSU Is Headed For A Super Regional, And It’s Just…a little bizarre

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It isn’t unprecedented for a team which struggled during a season to catch fire in the playoffs and go somewhere. For example, in 2015 the University of Virginia struggled through a season which saw them lose 24 games, including a 15-15 record in ACC play, and barely made the NCAA Tournament as a 3-seed. But then the Cavaliers got hot in the postseason and won the whole thing with a rather pedestrian 44-24 final record.

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It’s not unreasonable to say that of all of Mainieri’s teams which have made the postseason, of which there have been 11, this might be the worst one.

And yet they’ve managed to outstrip the achievements of the 2010 team, which lost in the UCLA regional that year, and the 2015 team, which was shocked by Houston at Alex Box Stadium in a year lots of people thought could have ended with the Tigers winning it all.

This is the ugly duckling of Mainieri’s teams.

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Mainieri’s last few years, particularly, have demonstrated him as a coach desperate to do something great. He makes broad leaps in game management and strategy which don’t fit moments, and he plays hunches which don’t seem sound.

Monday’s 9-8 win over Oregon was a good example. LSU won one of the most dramatic and fun-to-watch college baseball games in recent years, and the outcome is without a doubt gratifying to those of us who would like to see him go out in as successful a fashion as possible. But to say his strategic moves in that game made sense would be charitable in a fashion no responsible analyst would agree to sanction.

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This team has found a way to a super regional, and yet they come off as interlopers. Almost as a fraud in those uniforms.

Which is strange, because the talent and resumes aren’t lacking.

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That is, of course, how things go in baseball. And if the fortunes were to turn the opposite way and LSU was to outlast the Vols on the way to Omaha, it really wouldn’t be a huge surprise.

But even if that happened, it would still likely be seen much in the way of this weekend’s heroics – one more near-death experience for an LSU team which is surviving despite itself amid the psychodrama of Mainieri’s raging against the dying of the light.

As a fan, it’s impossible not to join in cheering, Dylan Thomas-style, as the coach and his players battle on against the odds. Still, one wonders what this team and this coach could do were it not for the burden and the baggage of Mainieri’s coaching denouement.

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I know Hayride can be a lightning rod around here, and I certainly don't always agree with Scott McKay's political or sports articles. But I found this one interesting.

I remember watching that 2015 UVA team in the CWS and pulling for them. I like seeing teams people are counting out to prove everyone wrong.

LSU does seem to have the talent to make that same run, and being able to win back to back vs. Oregon last weekend might have given a mental boost to those guys.