Seven-run seventh lifts Tigers

• By CARL DUBOIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Mar 26, 2008 - UPDATED: 6:36 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Share

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

Louis Coleman said it was good to be back on the mound to start a game. His coach, Paul Mainieri, was pleased with the way Coleman responded to the assignment.

“I told our team after the game that they ought to all go thank Louis Coleman for us winning this game, because I really didn’t think like we played that great,” Mainieri said Tuesday night after LSU’s 10-3 victory against Northwestern State.

Coleman left with a 3-1 lead after six innings. He allowed four hits and no earned runs.

LSU relief pitcher Austin Ross gave up two runs in three innings, but the Tigers took care of the Demons with seven runs on seven hits in the seventh inning.

“Up until that point, we weren’t having a lot of great at-bats,” Mainieri said.

“We misplay a ball in the first inning out in the outfield,” he said. “We made a few mental mistakes, and I didn’t think we were playing all that great, but because of Coleman pitching so well, it hid some of those things and they didn’t hurt us too badly.”

LSU (15-7) had 14 hits, half of them in the knockout seventh inning.

Northwestern State (13-9) had 10 hits, six off Ross, and committed two errors.

Sean Ochinko, Derek Helenihi and D.J. LeMahieu each drove in two runs and scored a run for LSU. Helenihi was 3-for-4 with a double.

Coleman (1-0) had two brief appearances this season before making his first start Tuesday. He changed his delivery in midseason last year, then again before this season.

The junior right-hander is back to a three-quarters-overhand motion after being a side-winding, submarine-type pitcher for the second half of the 2007 season.

He struck out seven batters and didn’t walk one. Leon Landry’s first-inning error in center field led to the unearned run against Coleman.