LSU Baseball Excited to See 2021 Season Extended With NCAA Tournament Bid

In the week leading up to the NCAA Tournament selection, Paul Mainieri was anything but confident. As LSU was forced to wait and see if its season would continue, Mainieri was watching other conference tournament games, weighing a retirement decision and running through scenarios that would or wouldn't keep the Tigers from getting a bid on Monday morning.

It came to a boiling point Sunday evening when Mainieri was getting quite antsy about the tournament. He and his wife sat down in their theatre room and started watching a Memorial Day program, which immediately put everything into perspective for the 39-year baseball coach.

"I wear my emotions on my sleeves sometimes and you start thinking about the importance of Memorial Day and comparing it to whether or not we get a bid the next day, I started to not really worry quite as much," Mainieri said. "It was really sombering to watch that show and realize what's important in the world."

On Monday, the team learned it'd be taking a trip to Eugene, Oregon in the Oregon regional of the NCAA tournament, where the Tigers will face Gonzaga on Friday evening at 9 p.m. central time. LSU has experience with going out to the West Coast for a regional, heading to Corvallis, Oregon back in 2018 and losing to the eventual national champs Oregon State.

Now that they're in, the Tigers' schedule becomes a little more clear. Mainieri said the team will practice on Monday evening to start preparing the team for that kind of night environment, before heading up to Oregon early Wednesday morning for the first game on Friday. Mainieri said the team will be treating this like an adventure and the players are excited about being able to continue their season.

"We're looking forward to it. I said after Georgia all we needed was an opportunity and today we're fortunate to get an opportunity," pitcher Landon Marceaux said.

"It was a big relief," outfielder Gavin Dugas said. "We got the opportunity and now we gotta take advantage of it. It will be my first time on the west coast and I'm excited to experience it. You can't be anymore excited to get to play another game with this team so I'm stoked and I know everybody on the team is."

Five wins is what separates LSU from Omaha and now that the postseason is here, anything can happen. Mainieri remembers Fresno State being a No. 4 seed in a regional and going on to win a national championship and knows better than most that it's all about the team that can get hot at the right time.

Dugas says his ribs are close to 100% after bruising them in that final series against Texas A&M. The pitching staff is well rested as outside of Marceaux, it will be two full weeks since any arm has thrown in live action. LSU has a tough first challenge in Gonzaga on that Friday night, a team that was considered to host a regional but ultimately fell just short.

So for Mainieri and LSU, one last dance in the tournament starts now and judging by his team's reaction, Mainieri feels good about the mindset his players have.

"The way our team reacted, that gives me a lot of optimism of how our team will play this weekend," Mainieri said. "It showed that it really does matter to these kids.

"Crazy things can happen, you just gotta go out there and play the game. We've got our work cut out for us, it's going to be a difficult regional but we've just gotta take it one at a time and let it rip."