MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The beginning of any baseball season is always going to be exciting, but there's a little extra juice when you open the year with the reigning national champions that are ranked first in the nation.
That's exactly what the Milwaukee Panthers will do when they face LSU to open the season on February 13th.
"LSU is probably the mecca in baseball in college," says senior catcher and first baseman Joey Spence.
"Kinda a once in a lifetime opportunity to play these guys," says senior outfielder Charlie Marion.
After winning two titles in the last three seasons, the Tigers are ranked first in two preseason polls and ranked second in two others.
"I think you play Division 1 baseball because you want to play the best," says Shaun Wegner, Milwaukee baseball coach. "Don't know if they are handing out rings or not but I would assume there's some sort of celebration going on for the weekend so it's going to be a good test for our guys. How can we handle our emotions, how can we slow the game down, use our breath and really embrace the environment instead of letting the environment overwhelm us."
The two programs have never played each other. The Panthers are looking to make some noise in the college baseball world and they know no one expects them to.
"We got nothing to lose going there. If we win, we win. If we lose, we lose. Try to kick their butt," laughed Marion. "It's a great experience for us."
"They have the respect as one of the best teams in the country. We're a smaller school from the Midwest so it's obviously an uphill battle but we're going in there fearless and we're going in there ready to go. I know our guys are prepared and we're ready to face the challenge," says Spence.
"The thing we always talk about is playing against the baseball and not the opponent. As long as we take care of our business, if we get beat, we can live with that. We just want to play a good brand of baseball and represent our program in the right way," says Wegner.
The Panthers schedule starts with LSU, but also features Power 4 Conference opponents like Duke, Iowa, Minnesota, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Purdue.
"They're throwing us into the fire. We're not easing into this, we're ready to go day one," says Spence.
The difficult schedule is with one goal in mind. Last season, Milwaukee was one win away from it's first NCAA Regional berth since 2010 before falling to Wright State in the Horizon League Championship game.
"We’re in a one bid league so we know that ultimately we're building towards the end of our season. But if we can put ourselves into a regional environment, kinda something we aspire to do later in the year and we can kinda get tested and find out where our weaknesses are and try to attack those as we go throughout the year," said Wegner.
Milwaukee advanced to Championship Saturday with a 12-6 win over Wright State, but the Raiders bounced back with 13-4 and 2-0 wins.
"It definitely has a chip on our shoulder. We had a taste of it and quite honestly in that moment, we weren't prepared for it. We were a little overwhelmed and Wright state kinda lives in that moment. Now that we've tasted it, felt it, and seen what it looks like I'm hoping that can kinda transcend into this year and get us ready so hopefully we can be there again and handle it a little bit differently," says Wegner.
The three-game series with LSU starts on Friday, February 13th. Milwaukee opens it's home slate with Wright State March 20th.