BATON ROUGE- The LSU softball team, the tenth overall national seed, will open the NCAA Division I Softball Championship on Friday night at Tiger Park.

The Tigers will play against the Long Island University (LIU) Brooklyn Blackbirds at 6 p.m. on Friday.

This is the second consecutive year LSU will be hosting its own regional. The team will be hosting the Arizona Sun Devils, LIU Brooklyn and McNeese State in the double-elimination tournament.

The Sun Devils and Cowgirls will kick off the tournament on Friday at 3 p.m.

The Tigers are making their 18th appearance in the NCAA tournament, extending its record run in the post season to 11 consecutive years.

The team has won 15 of their last 17 games as they enter into this weekend‘s tournament play.

The Tigers extended that by going 3-1 in the SEC tournament last week in Starkville, falling only in the championship game.

“Hopefully we’ve played the whole season like we were playing in postseason tournament games, so I think we are well rehearsed for this moment,” head coach Beth Torina said. “The plan is to not make these games bigger than they are and to go out and compete the same way we’ve been all year long.”

The winner of the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional will advance to the next round and face the winner of the NCAA Harrisonburg Regional hosted by James Madison University and features overall No. 7 seed James Madison, North Carolina, Longwood and Princeton.  

Every game of the NCAA Baton Rouge Regional will be streamed online on SEC Network + and available through WatchESPN.