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PINEVILLE, La. – Last weekend, as the Louisiana College baseball team suffered a sweep at the hands of Texas-Tyler, its looked as though the team might slip from fourth to fifth place in the American Southwest Conference East Division and miss the conference tournament.

Thanks to strong play from the Wildcats (14-22) in the early part of their conference schedule, this didn't happen as a loss by East Texas Baptist put LC into the tournament on a tiebreaker.

It's what LC veteran players are calling a “breath of fresh air.”

“Before I went to the mound last weekend one of our freshmen, Cary Myers, told me to 'play like it's  your last game,'” fifth-year senior pitcher Greg Uzee (Gretna, La./Archbishop Shaw) said. “While I was out there, it really hit me. I was like, 'Man, this really could be it for me. If we don't get in the tournament, I'll never play again. It was a powerful feeling.”

Lucky for Uzee, he gets at least one more weekend of baseball as the Wildcats have a best-of-three series with Concordia, the No. 1 team from the ASC West, in Austin, Texas, to prepare for.

The series begins Friday night at 7 with a single game and wraps Saturday with Game 2 and an if-necessary Game 3 beginning at 1 p.m.

The Wildcats enter the series losers of five of their last six games, but Uzee said recent struggles are already a distant memory.

“It's already behinds us,” Uzee said. “I think we'll come out this weekend with more fire than ever before. We all got that feeling of what it would be like to have this season end in Tyler last weekend. It was painful. But we've got a second chance to keep this thing going. Every game you play, somebody will tell you to play like it's your last game. For us, now, if we don't play like it's our last game, it will be.”

Louisiana College coach Mike Byrnes, who has guided Louisiana College to the postseason in 10 of his 12 seasons, said he was as excited as his players to still be alive in the postseason.

“We're an 0-0 team with an extra week of baseball,” Byrnes said. “We're in a position that a lot of teams wish they could be in. We've put last weekend behind us and are focusing on the fact that we gave ourselves an opportunity to play for an ASC championship. We're just happy to still be alive.”

The winner of the LC-Concordia series gains entry into next weekend's Championship series, a four-team double-elimination tournament that will take place at the home site of the highest-seeded team remaining in the West Division after this weekend.