After rain delays, postponements and eventually a late-night start, LSU baseball finally started its SEC Tournament campaign with a solid 11-6 win over Kentucky.
The Tigers got in a hole early after Kentucky’s Devin Burkes hit a two-run home run in the second inning, but it did not take long for the bats to come alive and respond. LSU scored three runs each in the third and fourth innings and never looked back from there.
“That’s a team across the field that’s well coached that’s playing for a lot right now so you knew you were going to get their best shot,” LSU Head Coach Jay Johnson said. “We were able to withstand that and then settle into the game and just play really mature baseball which I was really happy to see.”
Tyler McManus got hot at the plate early, hitting two doubles in his first two at bats with the second one giving LSU its first lead at 3-2. The Tigers fed off that momentum and tallied three more runs in the next inning on RBI singles from Dylan Crews and Josh Pearson. Pearson was the most impressive Tiger at the plate, finishing an insane 5-5 on the night with a home run and three RBI.
Even without two of its best hitters in Jacob Berry and Cade Doughty, LSU’s bats showed how dangerous they can be on any given night, making the Tigers a tough out in the postseason.
On the mound, Ma’Khail Hilliard put together another solid outing going six innings, allowing just two runs and striking out six. That kind of outing is what Head Coach Jay Johnson was looking for out of his ace to start the tournament, and it allowed LSU to save some of its bullpen arms for the later rounds.
“It was big once [Hilliard] gave up the two not to give up anymore,” Johnson said. “The most pivotal pitch of the game was the strikeout in the fourth with the bases loaded.”
Devin Fontenot replaced Hilliard in the seventh inning and looked solid before giving up a three-run home run to Burkes. Fontenot would finish the night pitching 1.2 innings giving up four runs on three hits. Grant Taylor replaced him in the eighth and pitched just a third of an inning before Riley Cooper came on to close things out in the ninth.
This win gives LSU a good bit of momentum and now places the Tigers into the winner’s bracket going into the weekend. They are now set to face Tennessee in Friday’s nightcap, scheduled for approximately 30 minutes after the end of the Alabama vs. Texas A&M game at 4:30 p.m. The Volunteers are the No.1 ranked team in the country and are coming off a dominant 10-1 win over Vanderbilt. This will be a rematch of last year’s entertaining super regional that Tennessee won at home. The game will be streaming live on SEC Network.
