LSU players Dylan Crews and Tre’ Morgan won bronze medals Friday at Honkbalweek Haarlem in the Netherlands, where the U.S. Collegiate National Team beat Japan 5-1 at Haarlem’s Pim Mulier Stadium.
Team USA went 4-3 record at Honkbalweek Haarlem, a bi-annual international invitational tournament.
The Americans avenged a 1-0 opening-round loss to Japan with their bronze-medal game victory.
They beat Italy 9-0, Cuba 2-0 and the Netherlands 10-0 but lost 3-2 to Curacao to go 3-2 in the opening round of the eight-day tourney, then lost 3-2 again to Curacao in a semifinal-round game Thursday.
The Netherlands went on to beat Curacao 6-1 in the championship game later Friday.
Crews started all seven games in right field. He hit just .100 in 20 at-bats, but drew six walks and scored four runs while driving in one run. Morgan started six games at first base and hit .133 in 15 at-bats. He drew three walks, scored two runs and had one RBI.
LSU has produced 18 members of the U.S. Collegiate National Team throughout program history, including Crews, Morgan and infielder Jacob Berry, who is expected to be selected in Sunday night’s first round of the 2022 Major League Baseball Draft. Berry joined Crews in playing for Team USA in 2021.
Former LSU coach Paul Mainieri was the Collegiate National Team’s head coach in 2018, when the U.S. posted series wins over Chinese Taipei, Japan and Cuba with that included The 2018 U.S. squad included former Tigers Zack Hess, Zach Watson, Daniel Cabrera and Antoine Duplantis.
LSU has had a long history of success in international baseball on the Olympic stage that dates to 1988, when then-coach Skip Bertman – who served as Team USA’s pitching coach – and righty Ben McDonald helped lead the United States to gold medal at the Seoul Games in South Korea.
Reliever Rick Greene, who finished his career as LSU’s all-time saves leader with 29, pitched for the 1992 U.S. team that played at the Barcelona Games in Spain.
Bertman was the U.S.’s head coach in 1996, when the Americans won bronze with former LSU standouts Warren Morris and Jason Williams starting in the middle infield.
LSU righty Kurt Ainsworth pitched Team USA to victories over the Netherlands and Australia at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, where the Americans won gold for the first time since ’88.
that result is underachieving.