[Anhil8tor]

As it turned out, Louisiana's Ragin' Cajun baseball team went into battle in the weekend's NCAA Regional Tournament without its top two pitchers.

That's like asking a football team to play a game without running backs, or a basketball team to concede every rebound. It's telling Jeff Gordon to drive on only two wheels.

"None of these coaches here would let you walk up and cut their number one and number two off before this tournament," said UL coach Tony Robichaux.

So how did the Cajuns hold their three regional opponents to 12 runs, take one elimination-game win and drop their two losses in regional play by a total of three runs?

"You've got to give our other guys a lot of credit," Robichaux said. "The rest of the pitching staff did a great job. We knew going in that we'd have to score more runs to compensate, and that's what eventually did us in."

Sunday's 5-4 elimination-game loss to Alabama was marred by the premature loss of senior left-hander Austin Faught, the Sun Belt Conference's Pitcher of the Year and a second-team All-America selection. Faught - the only unbeaten starter on any of the country's All-America teams - was unavailable in UL's first two tournament games because of a sore elbow.

He had thrown some on Saturday and told Robichaux that he could start Sunday's contest, but after three strikeouts in the first inning he told the Cajun coaches that something wasn't right.

"He came in after the first inning and said he felt a little bit of pulling in his elbow," Robichaux said. "He's already had 'Tommy John' surgery, and it was in the area where the graft occurred, so it was an area that is dangerous."

Faught went back out for the second inning, under direction that if he kept feeling a pull that he was to signal the bench. He got three easy outs in the second, but no relief from the tightness.

"We agreed there was no reason to send him back out," Robichaux said. "There's no reason to hurt somebody's arm."

At least Faught got through seven batters. Cajun senior right-hander Kevin Ardoin only made it through five on Friday before having to leave UL's opener against Alabama, only this time he was trailing 4-0 after a fourth straight ineffective outing.

Ardoin, who was 10-1 at one time this season, was tagged for that 7-5 loss and finished up with a 10-5 mark.

It could have been name-a-score for the Crimson Tide, but the Cajun pitching staff got solid performances from Thad Montgomery, Brandt Sanders and Kraig Schambough in relief, with only six hits and three runs allowed over the final eight and two-thirds innings.

One day later, Hunter Moody and Micah Cockrell did not allow an earned run to Southern's Jaguars in a 9-1 Saturday victory that put UL back against the Crimson Tide.

Jered Salazar had to come in much earlier than expected in Sunday's game, probably contributing to him allowing four hits and three earned runs in his three innings of work. But little-used Ian Pecoraro stymied Alabama over the final four innings with a surprising three-hit, four-strikeout effort.

"Ian gave us a chance to win," Robichaux said. "Jered was in an unfair situation, and we told our guys they had to support him. He hung one slider and got hurt by an error, but he never gave up the three-run inning and that's what we preach."

In all, the Cajun pitching staff allowed only 24 hits in three NCAA Tournament games and only eight earned runs. If someone had offered those numbers to Robichaux before the start of the tournament - especially with his two top guns totaling only two and one-third innings on the mound - he'd have gladly taken them.

"That's something we couldn't control," said senior third baseman Dallas Morris. "But if they couldn't go, we had to play as if it didn't matter and let the next guy do his job."

But the Cajuns got behind in both games against the Crimson Tide, and their inability to stage late-inning rallies continued. UL never came back from as much as a four-run deficit all season, and only came back from three runs behind three times - all of them coming before the end of March.

The Cajuns finished their season 3-15 when trailing after six innings ... and 42-2 when leading after six.

"When we had Kevin and Austin rolling we won 47 games, and we were a very good club," Robichaux said. "What I didn't want to happen was for us to let down when we didn't have them. We said we weren't going to worry about what we didn't have."

The Cajuns weren't out-hit in any of the three tournament games, but didn't get hits at key times - a trend that plagued them throughout the final month of the season.

"We kept getting more inconsistent one through nine in the order," Robichaux said. "We didn't ever get back to where we were earlier in the season.

"When you play 60 games, you're going to have games where you don't hit consistently, and unfortunately we had those at the end of the year."

Alabama 4, Louisiana 3

ALABAMA (40-22) LOUISIANA (48-19)

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