by Jonathan Zenk, LSUA Sports Information Director
After a 33-14 season, in which the team earned a Red River Athletic Conference Tournament title, LSUA Baseball has removed the interim tag from their coach. Head Coach Kody Gautreaux will be the face of the program moving forward. The Generals will play Kansas Wesleyan in the first round of the NAIA Tournament on Monday.
LSUA (33-14) is the No. 4 seed in the Oklahoma City region, playing against No. 5 seed Kansas Wesleyan (34-27) on Monday, the NAIA announced on Thursday evening’s selection show.
Gautreaux was named interim coach last summer and has led the Generals to their first NAIA Tournament berth since 2018, going 4-0 in this past weekend’s Red River Athletic Conference Tournament and defeating Houston-Victoria 13-2 to finish off the tournament run.
After starting out 8-8, Gautreaux led LSUA to a turnaround, as it went 25-6 to finish the season. Among the 33 wins, LSUA defeated a pair of tournament teams: McPherson and Loyola. The Generals bested 10 teams that won at least 30 games. The win total is the most since also tallying 33 wins in 2017, and the .758 winning percentage (25-8) in league games is the best since 2017 (.808, 21-5).
Gautreaux leads the program he once played for, and he was on the team that last won a tournament game in 2015, defeating Judson 9-4. He leads his team into action against KWU, which won the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament, defeating No. 22 Tabor twice to earn the school’s automatic bid and defeating McPherson along the way. KWU dropped the first game of the tournament before rebounding to win five consecutive games to win the tournament.
The other teams in the Oklahoma City regional are top-seeded and No. 3 nationally ranked Oklahoma City, second-seed Freed-Hardeman, and third-seed Mid-America Nazarene. If LSUA wins its opener, it will play OKC.
