LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – With a capacity crowd jammed into the Jack Stephens Center Legends Room, the Little Rock baseball team was getting a bit antsy Monday.
The Trojans won the OVC Tournament last week with a streak of five wins in four days to clinch its first NCAA Regional bid since 2011. But, as the late-morning selection show wore on, there was nothing for Trojans players to celebrate. As several regions were announced, the players and crowd held its breath but … nothing. Finally, the show took its first commercial break.
As the show wound down, it was announced Little Rock was heading to the Baton Rouge Regional to play LSU, the Region's No. 1 seed LSU.
"It got a little long. Some of the guys were hoping to go to regionals where they are from," senior shortstop
Alex Seguine said. "I am from California, so I wanted to go to UCLA or somewhere in California. But at the end of the day, it didn't really matter where we were going. I was just excited that we are still playing baseball. I am really pumped."
The Tigers' NCAA baseball tradition is widely known. The Tigers have won seven College World Series titles and made 19 College World Series appearances, and are 111-29 in Regional games.
"We all know how good LSU baseball is," Little Rock head coach
Chris Curry said. "But I go back to the movie
Hoosiers. The mound is 60 feet, 6 inches, and the field is the same. They are great program, and we have a lot of respect for them and the rest of the teams. We are glad to be playing baseball and playing on a big stage. That's how we get our recruits to come here, promising them to be able to play on a stage like this.
"We are going to have fun with it, and we are going to enjoy it. We are going to embrace it and go down there and get after it."
Curry addressed the crowd following the announcement and told them his team is where they thought they'd be at the beginning of the season. During one stretch, the Trojans were without six of their nine position players. Veteran catcher
Trey Hill never did return but freshman walk-on
Cade Martin has more than done the job and is hitting over .300 and was named the OVC Tournament Most Valuable Player.
He was one of the reasons the Trojans made a run as the No. 8 seed winning five games in four days capturing the automatic bid.
"When you go through tough times, it falls on leadership," Curry said. "We were very confident in the fall that this team was going to make a championship run based on the pieces we had and the caliber players we brought in. It's no secret we had a bad run of injuries, but what these guys were able to do was step up and take on bigger roles. We had some dark times, but as I told them after games in meetings, it's those tough times that establish toughness. Those guys never quit, and all we said was, 'Let's just make it to the tournament. Then, the team we thought we had showed up."
And that team will have a big challenge with the Tigers, who are a No. 6 national seed and finished third in the vaunted SEC.
"When we play our best, we know can play with anyone in the country," senior pitcher
Jack Cline said.
The Trojans proved that when they beat then-No. 11 Ole Miss 7-3 at Oxford, Miss., in April.
"I think just gave us the confidence to know what we can do when we play well," senior pitcher
Jackson Wells said. "We will have to play like that this weekend, but we know we can. That game proved it."
And while Seguine will have to settle for the bayou instead of his native SoCal beaches, he can live with that.
"We're in and that is what matters, especially to the seniors," Seguine said. "We've been playing these games knowing they could be our last, so it's good to know we get to keep playing, and it really doesn't matter where."
