Tigers to stick with strengths vs. UCI

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jun 5, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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By now, the point has been clearly pushed across.

In case you haven’t heard, the red-hot LSU baseball team will not adapt its style simply because UC Irvine figures to play at a different tempo and with a different approach.

Tigers coach Paul Mainieri beat on the same drum again Wednesday, reiterating what he has said all week.

“Just because they play small ball doesn’t mean we’re going to combat that by playing small ball ourselves,” Mainieri said.

Maybe not.

But if LSU (46-16-1) finds itself in position to dabble in small ball or has to manufacture a run with a game on the line, the Tigers are equipped to adjust.

They just haven’t needed to test those skills much over the last six weeks.

Now, with the Anteaters (41-16) and their stingy pitching staff and low-scoring offense likely to limit the scoring opportunities, LSU might have to dust off certain skills.

“We have all the tools to play that way if we need to,” Tigers center fielder and No. 8 hitter Leon Landry said. “If we get into a situation where we need to manufacture a run, we have a lot of guys who can come through in the clutch that way. We’re not just a team that goes up there swinging to hit the ball out of the ballpark.”

It could be players like Landry, D.J. LeMahieu and Ryan Schimpf who carry more of the small-ball load if Irvine’s pitching staff follows the form it has shown all season.

The Anteaters’ staff brings a collective 2.88 earned-run average into this weekend’s best-of-three super regional series at Alex Box Stadium. UCI pitchers have recorded 477 strikeouts in 5122/3 innings and surrendered only 28 home runs.

“This late in this season, the more that’s at stake puts a bigger premium on every run you can score, but especially against guys that pitch that well,” LSU left fielder Jared Mitchell said. “We know every runner we get on is important.”

Put in baseball parlance by Landry, “Get ’em on, get ’em around and get ’em in.”