LSU baseball rolls into SEC Tournament

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The LSU baseball team struggled for a lot of the season.

But in the last month, they’ve been pretty darned good.

The Tigers swept Mississippi State over the weekend, scoring 25 runs over the three games to topple their fellow SEC Western Division contender.

With the victories, LSU finished the regular season with a 39-17 record, including a 21-9 mark in league play.

The Tigers won the SEC Western Division and shared the SEC overall regular season title.

The team has won 11 out of its past 12 SEC games, entering the conference tournament, which started yesterday.

The Tigers received a bye and will open play today against either Texas A&M or Missouri.

“It’s amazing when you think about it to win 11 of the last 12 SEC games,” LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri said. “We were this close to sweeping our last four SEC series. We did that back in 2008, and we were close again this year. We’ll be happy to share the championship with Florida, and we’re happy to be the Western Division Champions. I’m just so proud of our guys. We knew we had more in us. … I think we played tremendous baseball in this series.”

That LSU did.

The Tigers crushed the Bulldogs throughout the weekend, using timely hitting and clutch pitching to hold leads throughout most of the weekend.

In the series opener, ace Alex Lange was outstanding, working seven dominant innings to help LSU score a 3-1 series victory on Thursday night.

In the final two games, it was LSU’s bats which did most of the damage.

The Tigers scored 22 combined runs in the final two games of the series – 11 apiece in each game – to overwhelm Mississippi State and secure the sweep.

With the victories, the Tigers will be the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament. They’ll take on the winner of No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 10 Missouri.