LSU will get a chance to defend its national title.
Only this year, the Tigers will have to do it on the road.
The NCAA placed LSU in Los Angeles for the UCLA regional, where it’ll face UC-Irvine. The Tigers earned a No. 2 seed in that regional.
UCLA, the No. 6 national seed, plays regional No. 4 seed Kent State in the other game.
Besides LSU, UL-Lafayette earned a trip to Austin, Texas, where the Cajuns will face Rice in the Texas regional. Additionally, Grambling is a No. 4 seed in the Fayetteville, Ark., regional, where it’ll play top seed Arkansas.
Southeastern Louisiana, which went 40-19, was left out of the tournament for the second straight season.
The Tigers hosted both a regional and super regional a year ago, but will travel for a regional for the first time since 1989. That year, LSU went to College Station, Texas, earning a bid to the College World Series with a 5-4 11-inning win over Texas A&M in the eight-team regional.
A year ago, LSU won three straight games in the regional to advance to the Super Regional, where the Tigers beat Rice two consecutive times to earn the trip to Omaha, Neb.
