Familiar face awaits

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jun 8, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

LSU coach Paul Mainieri has grown pretty used to matching wits with friends and protégés the last few seasons, and he’s quick to say he isn’t comfortable at all with those battles.

Now, thanks to the NCAA tournament pairings, Mainieri — on college baseball’s biggest stage — will square off with a man whom he is as close to as anyone with whom he’s ever coached.

After finishing off a 5-3 super regional victory against Rice on Saturday at Alex Box Stadium, Mainieri’s attention understandably turned to Sunday’s Virginia-Ole Miss super regional game in Oxford, Miss.

The Cavaliers and Rebels battled to a standoff in two games to force the decisive game Sunday, which Virginia won 5-1 to punch a ticket to the 2009 College World Series — the program’s first trip to Omaha, Neb.

That sets up a first-round game between the Cavaliers (48-13-1) and No. 1-ranked LSU (51-16) at either 1 or 6 p.m. Saturday or Sunday.

It also means a welcome but awkward reunion for Mainieri and Virginia coach Brian O’Connor.

From 1995-2003, O’Connor was the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator under Mainieri at Notre Dame. Together they established the Fighting Irish as a national powerhouse — a rarity for any team from the North.

“Brian O’Connor is someone very special to me,” Mainieri said. “I hired him when I first got to Notre Dame when he was 23 to be my No. 1 assistant coach, and we developed not only an unbelievable working relationship but a friendship that will last forever.”

Mainieri and O’Connor guided ND to 399 wins in those nine seasons, a No. 1 national ranking in 2001 and the program’s first College World Series appearance in 45 years in 2002.

Two of O’Connor’s most notable pitching pupils are Brad Lidge and Aaron Heilman. Both were first-round picks in the Major League Baseball draft and are still in the big leagues as relief pitchers.

In the last two seasons at LSU, Mainieri has faced Michigan State head coach and former Notre Dame assistant David Grewe and Central Florida, coached by Terry Rooney and Cliff Godwin — the Tigers’ top two assistants last season, when they returned to the CWS.

Grewe left Michigan State to join Mainieri’s LSU staff last June after Rooney took the head-coaching job at UCF.

In those two showdowns against his former coaches, Mainieri is 5-0. As strong as the bond is with O’Connor, the Tigers coach would like to keep that record spotless.