It was a diamond of a week at the Love Shack

They came in droves to the 2021 Conference USA Tournament at J.C. Love Field at Pat Patterson Park last weekend, swarmed to the new park like flies to a dinner-on-the-grounds potato salad.?Good for them.?

They got their money’s-worth — especially Louisiana Tech’s home standing baseball fans. Their tickets proved worth more rides on the rollercoaster than anyone else’s.?

Besides the experience of a new park and good crowds and sunshine and the sheer unrestrained post-pandemic joy and novelty of being out again, that Golden Ticket got you the chance to cheer for a team that offered tightrope performances daily.

String it together with the thin and brittle rope of chance and you get six Tech games, four walk-off wins, two wins in extra innings, and three wins by one run—including two comeback wins over arch-rival Southern Miss Saturday to avoid elimination.?Mercy.?Old Dominion would win it, beating the runner-up Diamond Dogs 7-5 in 10 innings in the staggering Sunday finale.

Since coming to town for a couple of scheduled-on-the-fly games to close out the season against the Bulldogs May 20 and 21, the Monarchs have been in town long enough to pay taxes. No. 18-ranked ODU proved to be a scrappy bunch, talented in every way, and left the Love Shack 6-0.?

That Tech lost in the championship but was hardly the loser will take some explanation, and explaining is testy to do when the subject is all that happened on the corner of West Alabama and Tech Drive this past weekend.?

From Tech’s front row seat, the whole shebang was nothing less than a ridiculous, mind-numbing run, both entertaining and ulcer-inducing. So much happened so fast Saturday that moments after the doubleheader was done and Tech had survived the best punches from its rival, an exhausted, sweaty, smiling and somewhat shellshocked Tech coach Lane Burroughs sat on the couch in his office and said, only halfway joking, “What just happened?!”?

Good question. Saturday was like that. Most of the week was like that, a spicy mix of rally trains and colors and cheers and unrehearsed brilliance and brain cramps. A wild jumble of glorious pieces, scattered everywhere.?

Forgotten now is that the shenanigans started two hours late on a rain-delayed Wednesday morning, a lazy beginning that proved a smokescreen for what was in store over the next five days when, finally, it ended, Old Dominion the survivor in a game that lived up to the exclamation point this tournament deserved.?

Monday the team celebrated on the field and watched the selection show live to find out NC State, Alabama, and Rider were coming to town this weekend.?Here we go again.?

But first, where do the days just past fit into Tech Athletics history? Can you make a case that it’s one of the most significant ever??Let’s agree on the qualifications:?The event has to be for a title or on the way to a title. This weekend had that;?Your arch rival has to figure in, and Saturday was that times two;?The scores have to be tight, so yes to that, and the action compelling, and yes to that, considering some fairly stunning defense and timely homers and hitting, also some errors overcome on the field and on the bases — and some not.

There have been so many memorable moments in Tech’s athletic history. Lady Techster Final Fours. The Golden Era of Football, and seven bowl games in a row today.

Tons of track and field titles. The Dunkin’ Dogs in the Sweet 16. ?Lots of baseball titles too but — it’s been a while. What happened this weekend was here, in the shadow of Wyly Tower and just a home run and a long fly ball out from where Berry Hinton and the guys won all those Gulf States Conference titles at the old, really old ballpark where the new dorm apartments are being built.

This happened in Ruston, with Ruston there to support and see it.?It was a five-star week by any estimation. Insert a tip-of-the-cap here.?