Rod Walker: The state of Louisiana had plenty to stick its chest out about this baseball season

Louisiana is a football state today and always.

But for the past five months, baseball in the boot took this state on one heckuva ride.

From perennial power LSU to upstart Dillard University, there was plenty for baseball fans to gloat about in 2023. 

The crowning glory of that, of course, was Monday night when the LSU Tigers claimed their seventh national championship in a lopsided victory over Florida in Omaha, Nebraska.

LSU faithful waited 14 long years for another title, which is a really long time in Tiger years after Skip Bertman spoiled the purple and gold with five titles in a 10-year span from 1991-2000.

It capped off a baseball season that will be remembered for a mighty long time in Baton Rouge for a team that ended up living up to the hype of being the preseason No. 1 team in all of college baseball.

“It’s one thing to know you have a good team or a talented team,” second-year LSU coach Jay Johnson said at Wednesday’s championship celebration. “It’s an entirely different thing to be committed to it every single day and follow through step by step.”

Even with their backs seemingly against the wall after getting destroyed 24-4 in Game 2 of the championship series, the Tigers rallied back in the decisive game to win 18-4.

“Who in the world loses a game by 20, then comes back to win a natty by 14,” LSU president William F. Tate IV said about the championship. “That’s swag.”

And that bounce back from one day to the next wasn’t even the craziest about-face in Louisiana this season.

That distinction belongs to the Tulane baseball team.

The Green Wave went a dismal 15-39 during the regular season. Then the team went to Clearwater, Florida, for the American Athletic Conference tournament and got as hot as the current New Orleans temperatures. Tulane ended up winning the AAC title to clinch an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, the program’s first trip since 2016.

“As long as there is breath in the lungs, you have a chance to be in the fight,” first-year Tulane coach Jay Uhlman said after the Wave won the conference tournament. “We had breath in our lungs, and we had to be beaten twice to be eliminated. When you have kids that believe and have a want, these type of things show up.”

Tulane went 0-2 in the Baton Rouge regional, losing to LSU in the opener and then getting eliminated by Sam Houston State. Perhaps here’s some consolation: The Wave got seven hits off LSU ace Paul Skenes, making Tulane one of just two teams (Kentucky was the other) to do that against the guy who will be one of the first people to have his name called during next week’s MLB draft.

Speaking of comebacks, there was Nicholls State. The Colonels returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 25 years by beating UNO in an all-Louisiana title game in the Southland Conference. They then went to the Tuscaloosa regional and put a scare in Alabama before falling 4-3, then getting eliminated a day later by Boston College.

UL lost to Coastal Carolina in the Sun Belt Conference title game but still earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. It was the Ragin’ Cajuns’ second straight NCAA tournament trip, and it also gave the state of Louisiana four teams in the tournament for a third straight year. It was the ninth time overall that at least four teams from Louisiana made the tournament. The state’s best year was 2000 when six teams (LSU, Tulane, UL, UNO, McNeese and UL-Monroe all made it) made the field.

It didn’t stop there.

Delgado went 47-13, tying the mark for most wins in a season on its way to finishing fifth in the Division I JUCO World Series.

LSU-Eunice finished the season with a mind-boggling 53-5 record.

And then there was the new kid on the block.

Dillard University never had fielded a baseball team until this season. The Bleu Devils, who compete in NAIA, won the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference in their very first season.

“Nobody really believed that we were going to win the championship in our first year,” Dillard coach Trennis Grant said. “I don’t think the kids even believed it at first. But I kept saying to them, ‘We can do this.’ ”

His message to his team this season was a simple one.

“Let’s make history.”

His team delivered.

So did the rest of Louisiana.