Stony Brook batters LSU, punches ticket for College World Series
Last Modified: Monday, June 11, 2012 2:22 PM
By Scooter Hobbs / American Press
BATON ROUGE — LSU picked the wrong time to have its bats go stone-cold anemic.
The Tigers needed some of whatever that aluminum was that Stony Brook was swinging.
The upstart Long Island, N.Y., team, which began the NCAA tournament as a lowly No. 4 regional seed, continued its assault on LSU pitching Sunday night with a 7-2 victory in the deciding game of the super regional.
The Seawolves (52-12), the first visiting team ever to win a super regional at LSU, will now be the first team from the northeast to visit Omaha, Neb., for the College World Series in 26 years.
It didn’t appear to be a fluke.
“They came down here and played great baseball,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said. “We have no excuses. They out-played us in every phase of the game.”
And it could have been worse.
The Seawolves, who out-hit the Tigers 15-3 and stranded 14 baserunners Sunday night, out-hit the Tigers 35-15 for the series.
The largest home crowd in LSU’s long and illustrious baseball history was treated to the rare spectacle of a dogpile not involving purple and gold.
“I thought our pitchers (six of them) did a pretty good job considering the hitters they were going up against,” Mainieri said. “We just couldn’t match their offense.”
Not hardly.
For the three-game series LSU hit just .153 (15-for-98), managing a season-low three hits in each of the two straight losses that ended the Tigers' season at 47-18.
“It’s frustrating when you can’t hit,” Mainieri said. “This weekend it just went very cold.”
Frankie Vanderka (3-3), normally the Seawolves’ closer, started and closed the game even though his head coach Matt Senk acted the previous day like he’d have to draw straws to choose his third starter.
“I didn’t realize their staff was as good as it was,” said Mainieri, who was expecting some heavy aluminum from the Seawolves. “Part of it was our bats went cold, part of it was their pitching, part of it was their defense.
“We hit some balls hard, but it seemed like they had a defender everywhere we hit it and they ran them down.”
“It seemed like they had five outfielders out there,” said LSU’s Mason Katz, who provided a rare highlight in the bottom of the first when he tied the game 1-1 with a solo home run off of Vanderka.
“One of the very few mistakes that kid made all night,” Katz said.
It was a minor annoyance to the Seawolves.
Stony Brook went on to get 11 hits and six runs before LSU got its second hit of the game in the seventh inning.
That also led to a run when Tyler Hanover followed Alex Edward’s one-out double with a single to put runners on the corners.
It was the only time in the three-game series that LSU put together back-to-back hits.
It was far too little, far too late.
One lone Seawolf had more hits than LSU did and another matched the Tigers as center fielder Travis Jankowski went 4-for-6 and scored twice along with tracking down several balls in the gap, while William Carmona went 3-for-5.
Maxx Tissenbaum had a pair of doubles and drove in three for Stony Brook.
LSU starter Ryan Eades didn’t get through the third inning after wiggling out of a first-inning jam with only one run.
Jankowski led off the third inning with a double and the Seawolves put together four straight two-out hits to chase Eades and take a 4-1 lead.
Meanwhile, the Tigers never got comfortable against Vanderka.
“We battled through, we gave it our best,” said senior shortstop Austin Nola. “We left it all out on the field. It’s going to be hard to swallow for a few days.”
Posted By: P.Q. On: 6/11/2012
Title: Ha ha
You gotta love it!
Posted By: Silvin On: 6/11/2012
Title: tax payer
LSU-just did not have it!!
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