Louisiana College Sports Report - LA, Part 3
Thursday, 02 July 2009 22:33
Lenny Vangilder's Blog
DAPHNE, Ala. – Ken Trahan forgot, there is another LA out there
besides Louisiana and Los Angeles. It’s called Lower Alabama.
In these parts, it seems football season never ends. There’s the
conventional football season in the fall, recruiting, spring football,
post-spring, preseason hype, preseason practice, and then the cycle
starts anew.
Here today, they’re talking about a signee who has reportedly qualified academically in time to report to campus for the second half of summer session.
Recruit rankings for next February’s signing class have already been run in these parts. Of their top 18, more than half have already committed to either Alabama (seven) or Auburn (three).
Then again, who waits until National Signing Day anymore to declare their intentions? By then, many of a school’s signees have graduated from high school and enrolled early in college.
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On this holiday weekend, one guy you wouldn’t mind trading places with is Tulane baseball coach Rick Jones. He’s spending his summer vacation as head coach of USA Baseball’s national team, made up of rising college sophomores and juniors.
This July 4, Jones will find himself in his home state of North Carolina, wearing “USA” across his chest, coaching an all-star (or soon-to-be all-star) team of college baseball talent.
By the way, four Team USA pitchers combined on the first no-hitter in national team history Thursday night against Guatemala. Jones’ closer in the spring, Nick Pepitone, was the third of the four pitchers in the combined no-no.
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We’ll have some basketball schedule news for you next week, but for now, how about some 2010 baseball schedule info?
LSU will begin defense of its national championship and open year two in the new Alex Box Stadium on Feb. 19, 2010, against in-state foe Centenary in the first of a three-game series.
The Tigers will open Southeastern Conference play a month later, also at home, against the only other league team to reach the College World Series – Arkansas. On the way to Baton Rouge, the Hogs will stop in Lake Charles for a midweek series with McNeese State.
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We’ll get more into this in our One Tank Tour later in the month, but for those of you expecting the Bayou Classic to decide who represents the SWAC’s Western Division in the conference championship game, it may be the case, but it might not get decided on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
How’s that, you ask? It’s because the Bayou Classic won’t be Southern’s final regular-season game, though not by their choice. Texas Southern agreed to move its home game with Southern to Dec. 5 so it can be televised by ESPNU (probably in front of several dozen TSU fans and whatever number of Southern fans can muster up the strength to make another road trip the week after the Bayou Classic).
More news from the SWAC on the scheduling front: After two years of a seven-game conference schedule – which was always more confusing because some conference schools played “non-conference” games against one of the other two teams they weren’t scheduled to play – the league is going back to a full round-robin beginning in 2010.
While that will help the league truly determine a league champion, it’s taking two possibilities away from schools to earn guarantee paydays on the road.
