Tigers place three on Collegiate Baseball All-American team
Published 8:00 pm Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Mark up another first for the 2013 LSU baseball team (57-9), which has already tied the school record for victories and for the first time in 16 trips will arrive at the College World Series with single-digit losses.
On Wednesday, a trio of Tigers were named first-team All-American on the Collegiate Baseball Writers’ Association team — the first time in school history the Tigers have had three selections.
Selected were right-handed sophomore pitcher Aaron Nola, senior first baseman Mason Katz and freshman shortstop Alex Bregman.
LSU and Cal State Fullerton were the only schools with more than one player on the first team.
Bregman, who leads the Tigers with a .380 batting average, was named the organization’s freshman of the year on Monday.
Bregman is second in the nation with 104 hits and will need just one in Omaha to tie Mercer’s Chesny Young.
Nola, who threw a two-hit shutout against Oklahoma in the opener of LSU’s super regional series, is 12-0 with a 1.68 ERA and hasn’t allowed an earned run in three postseason starts. In the super regional he out-dueled Jonathan Gray, who was also named to the All-American first team.
Nola was named SEC Pitcher of the Year and has 117 strikeouts in 188 innings.
He will start the CWS opener for the Tigers when they play UCLA (44-17) at 7 p.m. Sunday, the last of the four opening-round games.
Katz, a four-year starter, led LSU in RBIs with 68 and home runs with 15.
The three gives LSU 26 first-team All-Americans in its history, including eight for head coach Paul Manieri in his seven seasons with the Tigers.
Other first-teamers playing in the College World Series include Mississippi State outfielder Hunter Renfroe, North Carolina DH Colin Moran, Oregon State pitcher Andrew Moore and UCLA relief pitcher David Berg.
Along with UCLA, LSU is in the same CWS bracket with North Carolina and North Carolina State.
The other bracket has Mississippi State, Oregon State, Indiana and Louisville.
The two brackets play double elimination, with the two survivors playing a best-of-three series for the national championship beginning on June 24.
(Associated Press)
