LSU sweeps Ky., grabs West lead

• By CARL DUBOIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: May 5, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — Derek Helenihi coaxed a walk five pitches after first being down to LSU’s last strike. Matt Clark turned on the next pitch, driving a two-out, two-run homer high over the right-field wall.

The ninth-inning home run held up after Jared Bradford again took the mound and kept Kentucky from scoring, closing out a 9-8 comeback victory Sunday that gave LSU its second consecutive SEC sweep and sole possession of first place in the Western Division.

Clark, a left-handed batter who didn’t play in the first two games of the series because he didn’t match up well against Kentucky’s left-handed starting pitchers, was 3-for-5 with two doubles, three RBIs and three runs.

The home run, his team-leading 17th of the season, came off Kentucky left-handed reliever Andrew Albers.

“I hit a fastball off the wall in the previous at-bat,” Clark said, “so I figured he wasn’t going to throw me a fastball on the first pitch again. I just sat on the slider, and he threw it, and I hit it.”

The right-field wall is 310 feet from home plate at the foul line. Clark’s home run was somewhere between there and straightaway right field, and its arc carried it well beyond the wall.

Anyone who didn’t know it was a home run off the bat was probably having the same Big Blue type of denial that made it difficult to wrap a Kentucky mind around the Bluegrass Miracle pass by LSU for a last-gasp football win here in 2002.

One didn’t need to go back that far in the archives of the memory to conjure up similar heartbreak for the Wildcats.

LSU had avoided a sweep on its last trip to Lexington when Quinn Stewart, down to the Tigers’ last strike, turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead with a two-run homer in a 5-2 victory.

Albers gave up that home run too.

“I feel bad for Andrew because he’s pitched so well the last three weeks,” Cohen said. “I mean, he was the SEC Pitcher of the Week a week ago.”

Clark leads LSU with 42 strikeouts, including one in his first at-bat Sunday. Cohen left Albers in the game after the walk to Helenihi, hoping Albers could induce Clark to swing at a bad pitch and strike out once more.

“We were just going to try and bury breaking balls,” Cohen said, “and instead of Andrew burying it, he throws it right down the center of the plate, just throws it right into Clark’s swing plane.”