CWS Championship

LSU vs. Texas. Best two-out-of-three. National seed #3 vs. #1. The match-up that most analyst predicted is the one that came true. Starting tonight, the best team in college baseball will be crowned in a few short days.

Many fans thought LSU should have been the #1 seed, but that honor went to Texas, who ended up in a tougher CWS bracket. There will be no more speculation on who the top team is after the three game championship series.

They both got to the championship series in different ways, but when you look at the CWS bracket, both teams made it to the final series the same way: Perfect 3-0 records. LSU returned to its Gorilla Ball days and blasted Virginia 9-5, Arkansas 9-1 and Arkansas again 14-5. Texas, some would say, caught some breaks in defeating Southern Miss 7-6, Arizona State 10-6 and Arizona State again 4-3. But none of that matters now. It's LSU's best against Texas' best for all the marbles.

This is what LSU fans have been waiting years for. Since Skip Bertman retired and Smoke Lavall ran the program into the ground, fans have wondered if LSU would return to the glory days. With more colleges putting an emphasis on college baseball and the new CWS format, LSU fans wondered if five titles in 10 years were what LSU baseball would forever be known for.

But Paul Mainieri has rebuilt the program into a giant and last year the team took its first step to returning LSU to glory. This year the team is looking to cement themselves alongside the 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 2000 teams.

The journey starts tonight and hopefully ends tomorrow night with the Tigers raising the championship trophy. Tiger fans would love nothing more than a perfect world series record, but if it goes to Wednesday and the Tigers win, there will be no complaints. The team just needs to continue what they've done all postseason and focus on the next at-bat or the next pitch and worry about the celebration later.