LSU coach Paul Mainieri often refers to baseball as “a humbling game.”
Following an emotional comeback victory against Vanderbilt on Friday night, the Tigers were thrown right back into the fire with a doubleheader on Saturday to close out their first Southeastern Conference series of the season.
What resulted was two losses and a long bus trip back to Baton Rouge.
In past years, Mainieri has had his share of pitchers and hitters he could turn to when looking to collect series victories. Pitchers like Kevin Gausman, Ryan Eades, Chris Cotton and Nick Goody gave him reliable arms that helped carry the Tigers to both a Super Regional and College World Series appearance in the past two seasons.
As for the lineup, two former Tigers — Raph Rhymes and Mason Katz — were known to provide veteran leadership against rival pitching.
This season, Mainieri has a combination of southpaws, junior Kyle Bouman and freshman Jared Poche’, both of whom had never experienced SEC play.  
Bouman was unable to keep his pitch count down in the first game of the doubleheader, tossing 41 pitches and surrendering three runs on three hits.
The Ferguson, Mo., native recovered to toss three more innings of clean baseball on just 32 pitches — throwing 73 total — but the damage was already done in a 5-3 loss.
In the second game of the doubleheader, Poche’ suffered a similar fate, allowing four runs on five hits in 4 1/3 innings pitched.
In his previous two starts against Southern and Northwestern State, Poche’ had surrendered eight hits in seven innings of work, but a different issue arose when he faced the Commodore lineup.
Poche’ surrendered five walks — three more than he had in his  first four starts combined heading into Saturday.
“He walked five, which was unusual for him … but there were a lot of close pitches he wasn’t getting the calls on. I thought he maintained really good composure and poise, and he battled through it,” Mainieri said.
Offensively, LSU has relied on sophomores Alex Bregman and Andrew Stevenson and junior Kade Scivicque early in the season, but on Saturday, the three Tigers combined to finish 2-for-21 (.095 batting average). Bregman didn’t register a hit in eight at-bats.
The squad’s two senior hitters, Sean McMullen and Christian Ibarra, ended the series 3-for-14 (.214 batting average). Ibarra struggled with a hamstring injury last week, and McMullen didn’t start Friday night because of a leg injury.
The Tigers’ lack of scoring stemmed more from a combination of poor plate discipline and efficient pitching from Vanderbilt’s three pitchers, junior Jared Miller, sophomore Tyler Ferguson and freshman Hayden Stone.
“You could take any names and combine them and give me stats that look [poor], but I’m not going to overreact to it,” Mainieri said. “It’s not an exaggeration when I tell you that there would be major league teams that wished they had [the Vanderbilt] pitching staff.”
LSU managed only four walks in the doubleheader, striking out 16 times.
Prior to Opening Day, Mainieri said he would be looking for leaders to emerge both on the field and in the clubhouse.
After the first weekend of SEC play, he may have to wait a little longer until such a player steps into that role.
“We just have to keep it in perspective that we ran up against probably the best pitching staff in the country on the road in the opening weekend with two first-time starting pitchers in the SEC,” Mainieri said. “We had one tremendous win this weekend, and there’s 27 more games to go.”