LSU living up to sports cliche

If ever a team lived up to the tired old sports cliche of playing the season one game at a time, it’s got to be this year’s LSU baseball team.

As sports fans in Louisiana already know, the Tigers were seemingly dead in the water in late April, with a sub-.500 record in Southeastern Conference play (6-11-1) and very little chance to even earn a spot in the SEC tournament, much less the NCAA tournament.

LSU’s subsequent school- and conference-record 23-game win streak following a disappointing 10-10, 12-inning tie against nationally-ranked Georgia is already the stuff of legend among the Tiger faithful.

How LSU went from a 23-16-1 record on April 20 to a 47-17-1 mark and a host spot for both the regional and super-regional round of NCAA postseason play is amazing in its execution -- 18 come-from-behind wins while going 24-1 since that tie with Georgia -- and amazingly simple, to listen to second-year coach Paul Mainieri and his players.

The Tigers simply refuse to lose, a saying the team has adopted as its motto.

Sunday’s 9-7 win over UC Irvine typified both the team’s attitude and its resiliency. The Anteaters had stunned LSU 11-5 on Saturday in the first game of a best-of-three series to determine one of eight spots at the College World Series, and seemed to be well on their way to a sweep and a second straight appearance in Omaha, Neb., leading 7-2 Sunday and needing only six outs to eliminate the Tigers.

But there was no quit in the Tigers, Mainieri told the media following Sunday’s comeback win.

“I know it seems like I say the same things over and over again but these kids don’t know how to quit,” Mainieri said. “I can honestly tell you that everyone in that dugout believed we could do it and there was no quit in anybody. One guy after another just kept doing it and it was an amazing thing.”

Left fielder Jared Mitchell, a former All-State football and baseball player at Westgate High School, led off the bottom of the eighth inning with a home run to pull the Tigers to within 7-3.

Mitchell contributed again in the ninth by walking with the bases loaded to force in a run, and scored the tying run on a Blake Dean single to right field. The former WHS standout also made a diving catch of a fly ball in the bottom of the ninth to help seal the win and force today’s deciding third game in the series.

“Every game since Auburn we’ve been playing for a championship,” Mitchell said earlier this week, noting that by taking that attitude, the win streak worked itself out. “We put ourselves in a situation where we were in a hole at 6-11-1, and with the teams we were playing, we knew we had to keep winning.”

Regardless of the outcome of today’s game, it’s been a remarkable run.

CHRIS LANDRY is sports editor of The Daily Iberian.