BATON ROUGE – Chris Sciambra belted a one-out, solo home run in the bottom of the ninth inning and top-ranked LSU defeated the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns, 4-3, in the opening game of the Baton Rouge Super Regional before an announced crowd of 11,179 on Saturday at Alex Box Stadium.
 
The best-of-three series continues on Sunday with first pitch scheduled for 6 p.m. The game will be televised nationally on ESPN2 and can be heard in the Lafayette area on ESPN 1420-AM and KPEL 96.5 FM.
 
Louisiana (42-22) will send freshman left-hander Gunner Leger (6-4, 2.87 ERA) to the mound on Sunday with LSU (52-10) countering with left-hander Jared Poche' (8-1, 3.05 ERA).
 
Sciambra, who went 2-for-4 at the plate, hit his third home run of the season as the Tigers managed five hits on the night. Jake Fraley, who also went 2-for-4 at the plate, drove in three runs for the Tigers, hitting a RBI double in the first inning before connecting on a two-run homer in the third of Ragin' Cajuns freshman starter Wyatt Marks.
 
Marks fanned six batters and allowed four hits and three earned runs in seven innings of work. Will Bacon (6-3) took the loss for the Ragin' Cajuns after relieving Marks to start the eighth inning.
 
"Wyatt (Marks) threw a great ballgame for us and out biggest concern was slowing the game down," Louisiana head coach Tony Robichaux said. "The game got a little fast (early) and as the game deepened, Wyatt got better at keeping it slower. I thought Wyatt did an outstanding job for a true freshman. He's been very good for us all season."
 
Louisiana trailed 3-0 after five innings before recording three hits off LSU starter Alex Lange, who fanned 11 batters and scattered 10 hits in eight innings of work. Joe Robbins and Kyle Clement each hit one-out singles off Lange before Tyler Girouard followed with a two-out single to center that plated Robbins.
 
The Ragin' Cajuns cut the lead to 3-2 in the eighth inning as they used a two-out rally against Lange. Stefan Trosclair reached on a single deep in the hole at second base before Girouard drew a walk and Evan Powell doubled to left-center, scoring Trosclair.
 
Louisiana, which scored seven runs of its 14 runs in the ninth inning last weekend in capturing the NCAA Houston Regional, tied the game at 3-3 as pinch-hitter Brenn Conrad chased Lange after belting his first home run of the season on the first pitch of the ninth inning.
 
"I was able to sit on the bench and watch Lange throw to every single batter, both right-handers and left-handers," Conrad said. "I was talking to Shug (Tyler Girouard) about it before the game and he told me to just go up there and hit the fastball. That's the first thing I saw so I just went for it."
 
Parker Bugg (1-2) earned the win for LSU after retiring all three batters he faced after relieving Lange. 
 
"We knew the kind of freshman (Lange) that we were going to be facing, he's very good," Robichaux said. "Our goal was going to stay as close to him as we could and hopefully try to make it relevant at the end when he'd start to tire and his pitch count got up. Brenn (Conrad) came off the bench and got the big lick for us to tie it up and then their kid (Sciambra) came up and did what a great team does … he stepped up and got a pitch that he could hit out of the ballpark.
 
"He got it out and that was the difference in the ballgame. It came down to that one pitch. We had a lot of (scoring) opportunities. Again, I'm really proud on how our true freshmen came in and slowed the game down, settled in and kept us out of our bullpen."
 
Clement and Butler had two hits each for Louisiana, which finished with 10 on the night, including four doubles. UL stranded eight runners on base, including a pair of runners in the sixth and eighth inning.