FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The son of a wheat and corn, soybeans and rice farmer in southeast Missouri, Luke Nichols long ago learned that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, that the sun shines on the evil and the good, that with every bit of nice comes a little nip of nasty.

Law of nature.

So Louisiana Tech's junior lefty, scheduled to start tonight at 7 against Kansas State of the Big 12 in the first round of the Fayetteville Regional, has spent zero time thinking about how his won-loss record might be a bit better if his teammates had finished off a few more of his sound starts.

"Can't control that," said Nichols, a sturdy 6-2, 205 lefty with a fastball that'll sink, another that hits the 90s, a sometimes slider and a change. He says it with a smile and a shrug, water off a duck's back or off a corn stalk, because he really can't control it — that "rain on the just and the unjust" thing — and because he really doesn't know what his record is.

His coach, Lane Burroughs, asked him that very thing in Thursday's early afternoon press conference after his team's brief practice at Baum-Walker Stadium. He smiled and shrugged and Burroughs smiled and shrugged and … help?

It's 4-3.  

Some of those losses or no-decisions that come quickly to mind:

Nichols pitched just 1.2 innings at FIU, but 5 of the 6 runs surrendered were unearned;

Left the game at Arizona with a shutout over 6-and-a-third;

Gave up 4 runs, one unearned, over 4.1 at Dallas Baptist when the Dogs didn't score until the 8^th in an 8-3 loss;

Gave up two runs through 6 at New Mexico. Tech lost in 13 innings.

Four wins. Three losses. Nichols remembers them all, just not the game-by-game numbers. Those are often left up to the fates.

But he knows how many games his team has won: 45. And a Conference USA championship.

"That" Nichols said, "is the main thing."

The next 'main thing' is Friday and the Wildcats, and he's just as confident about winning that one alongside "the guys in my dugout" as he is about The Hay Barn Bar and Grill being hard by Missouri 91, right where he left it, when he gets back home to Bell City, population 400ish.

His coach feels the same.

"He's been our most consistent starter," said Burroughs, who chose Nichols, a Saturday starter through the season, to open the series because of all the left-handed bats in K-State's lineup. "I give the sports information people and coaches in our league a lot of credit: they voted him first-team (All-CUSA), so they know what he's capable of. It seems sometimes when he's had a good start, we find a way to foul up the game. That doesn't mean we lost, but his overall record is not indicative of what he's done out there."

Burroughs has said it since the start of the season, Nichols' first at Tech since a happenstance email to the Bulldogs' staff started the wheels that led to Nichols rolling into Ruston from Jefferson College: "He's a good ol' farm boy, salt-of-the-earth-type kid — but don't let that fool you:  he's ultra-ultra-competitive."

Back in Bell City, if a guy's walking out of Rampley's General Store and Diner off Walnut, it's one thing to smile and nod if he's holding an ice-sweaty Fanta Orange. But two blocks south, if that same guy's holding a baseball bat and digging in at Bell City Ball Park, corner of Rock and Dunn, well, that's a bit of a different ballgame.

"When I get the ball," Nichols said, "there's never a doubt in my mind or in (Burroughs') mind. And that's a good feeling to have that kind of relationship with your coach, and I think it spreads throughout the team. It's a good feeling."