Race For Tournament Seeds Getting Tight
5/6/2015 10:26:00 AM | Baseball
While Southeastern Louisiana owns a three-and-a-half game lead on the rest of the league with six games to play, the race for the other top seeds at the Southland Conference Tournament in Sugar Land is wide open.
Sam Houston is in the thick of hunt with a 15-9 conference record. The Bearkats travel to Houston Baptist to begin their next-to-last weekend series Friday. Sam closes the regular season with a Tuesday night non-conference contest with top 10-ranked Texas A&M and hosts Lamar in the pair's final Southland action Thursday through Saturday at Don Sanders Stadium.
The Lions, who hold down first place with a 20-4 record, play all six of their final league contests at home in Hammond, La., as they take on sixth place Central Arkansas (13-11) this weekend and last place New Orleans (3-21) on May 14-16.
Northwestern State holds on to second place in the league with a 16-7 record. The Demons travel to face ninth place Abilene Christian (11-13) this Friday and end the year at home with fifth place Nicholls (14-10). The Colonels host UNO this weekend.
McNeese State holds down third place by .005 percentage points with a 17-10 Southland mark. The Cowboys only have one conference series remaining as they travel to Central Arkansas May 14-16. McNeese hosts Grambling in a non-conference series this weekend.
The top eight finishers in the regular season final standings (excluding Abilene Christian and Incarnate Word) earn berths in the Southland tournament at Constellation Field, the 9,500-seat stadium that is home to the minor league Skeeters. The event decides the which team advances to the NCAA Regional with the Southland's automatic berth.
Going into the Southland tournament as the No. 1 seed certainly is no guarantee of tournament success. In the 22 years since the league has decided its NCAA representative based on a post-season tournament seeded by results from regular season play, the No. 1 seed has won the tournament title twice (Lamar in Beaumont in 2004 and Texas State in 2011.
Sam Houston has won the baseball post-season tournament four times, but never as the one seed. The Kats were winners as the No. 4 seed three times (1996, 2007 and 2008) and the No. 7 seed once (2009).
In fact, No. 4 seeds have won more Southland baseball tournament championships than any other with eight victories. The No. 3 seed has taken the title five times. Southeastern Louisiana became the second No. 5 seed to win the tournament title last spring in Conway, Arkansas.
Sam Houston's games this weekend in Houston against the Huskies will start at 2 p.m. Friday, 1 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
