NEW ORLEANS - The question over whether the University of Louisiana can win an NCAA Baseball Regional without an effective Kevin Ardoin remains to be answered.

But the question over whether Ardoin could bounce back from four straight shaky outings was answered, and it was an emphatic no.

The Cajun senior righthander faced five Alabama batters, and by the time he left Friday's second game of the New Orleans Regional, the Crimson Tide had already scored four runs.

A single, a wild pitch, a hit batsman, another wild pitch and a two-run single got the UL starter in trouble in the first inning, and Evan Bush ended Ardoin's misery with a towering two-run homer.

From there, the Tide managed just enough the rest of the way to hold on for a 7-5 victory, one that dropped the Cajuns (47-18) into the losers' bracket and put UL one loss away from ending its season.

"We've said it before ... the season is a marathon, but it's a sprint from here on," said Cajun coach Tony Robichaux. "Whoever can get the big hit in the gap or take it out of the park at the right time wins in the regionals."

Second-seeded Alabama (39-21) did that, with Bush adding a solo homer in the seventh inning and Zac Welch getting a leadoff shot in the fifth. Those were necessary since the Cajuns rallied for three runs in the sixth inning off Tide starter Wade LeBlanc to cut the difference to 6-5.

"The game seemed like it lasted two days," said Alabama coach Jim Wells. "We're just glad to have survived. We swung it better than we have, and then we held on."

That hold-on put the Tide into today's 6:30 p.m. winners' bracket finale against Tulane, a 17-7 winner over Southern in Friday's opening game. The Cajuns will take on the Jaguars in today's 2:30 p.m. elimination game, and now face the daunting task of winning four straight games in order to advance out of regional play.

LeBlanc (5-5) fanned nine in five innings but gave up eight hits and five earned runs, three of those in UL's sixth-inning rally that was keyed by John Coker's two-run single that made it a one-run game.

"At times I made pitches when I had to," said LeBlanc, a product of Barbe High in Lake Charles. "Mentally, I think I lost focus toward the end."

"He (LeBlanc) had started with a lot of changes to the righthanded batters," said Coker, who finished with three of the Cajuns' 11 hits. "He started hanging the change in the zone late, and our guys were able to adjust."

It was a fast ball, though, that Coker hit on the game's second pitch for a triple, and he later scored on freshman Jonathan Lucroy's one-out single.

But that lead was short-lived. Allen Rice singled off Ardoin (10-5) to lead off the bottom of the first, and after a wild pitch Ardoin plunked No. 2 hitter Matt Grooms. After fanning Tide leading hitter Gabe Scott but moving the runners with another wild pitch, Welch blooped a single into right field to score two runs.

That brought up Bush, who snapped an 0-for-12 streak in last week's SEC Tournament with his 16th homer of the season and capped the shortest outing of Ardoin's career as a starter.

"We went with a 10-game winner, hoping he could find himself, and he didn't," Robichaux said. "We just didn't get it done on the mound early."

Senior Thad Montgomery, called on much quicker than he expected, had a heroic five innings of relief, scattering five hits and fanning three. After giving up a triple to Cale Iorg, the first batter he faced, he retired 10 of the next 11 batters he faced before Emeel Salem's two-out bunt single in the fourth.

On that play, though, a throwing error moved him to second, a passed ball put Salem at third and Grooms plated him with a single. Welch then led off the next inning with his homer that provided four-run bulge - a margin the Cajuns had never come back from this season.

"Thad came in and did a great job," Robichaux said. "We could have been out of the game after the first inning, but he kept them close. But the biggest thing was that they built on their four-run lead. The homers in the middle innings were huge."

The Cajuns had answered with one run in the second when LeBlanc walked Phillip Hawke to lead off the inning, Justin Morgan doubled and Hawke scored on Coker's infield grounder. But it was in the sixth that UL made the most noise.

Alex Preciado led off the sixth with a double up the left-center gap, and LeBlanc had his second and third walks of the game with passes to Micah Cockrell and Hawke. Morgan followed with a single to left that cut it to 6-3 and chased LeBlanc, and after reliever Jordan Davis fanned Justin Merendino Coker poked a dying liner down the line in left that scored Cockrell and Hawke to make it a one-run game.

Originally published June 4, 2005