With the game all but clinched in the bottom of the eighth, LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri gave senior pitcher Kyle Bouman a shot in the batter’s box.
After taking two balls, Bouman chopped a slow grounder to the shortstop and beat the late throw for an infield single and his first career base hit.
It was that kind of day for the Tigers.
After visiting Princeton (0-3) held LSU to four hits in Game 1 of a weekend series on Friday, the No. 2 Tigers (10-1) pounced on the Ivy Leaguers at the plate in Saturday’s doubleheader in Alex Box Stadium.
LSU racked up 31 hits in the two games, including a season-high tying 21 in the series finale Saturday night. Mainieri challenged his club to play with more aggression after Friday’s stale performance.
Challenge accepted.
“We were more aggressive,” said LSU junior shortstop Alex Bregman. “We came out with a lot more energy Saturday. We need to continue to do that and use the whole field. Guys are getting hits from the right field line to the left field line. We have to do that as an offense.”
On Friday night, LSU’s pitching got the job done. In the two games on Saturday, it was the offense.
LSU had four hitless innings in the first game of the weekend series. The team totaled just three such innings in the final two. On Friday, just one Tiger recorded a multi-hit game. On Saturday, there were eight.
LSU senior outfielder Jared Foster, who blasted a three-run homer in Game 2 of Saturday’s doubleheader, said the difference at the plate from Friday to Saturday was “night and day.”

“The first few games this past week, we kind of started off slow and drifted a little bit,” Foster said. “We made it an emphasis to come out here and start strong and finish strong. The whole time it was steady hitting.”
Mainieri said he wasn’t surprised by his team’s struggles at the plate Friday. He also wasn’t shocked by its sudden onslaught to wrap up the series Saturday. After 32 seasons as a college skipper, he’s seen the same pattern repeat itself countless times.
“As the weekend goes on, the guys start to feel more and more comfortable playing,” Mainieri said. “Typically on Fridays, guys are a little bit nervous about a weekend series beginning. Then by the end of the weekend, you’re pretty used to the other team and maybe you’re starting to get into the latter guys of their pitching staff as well.”
LSU has won seven consecutive games since falling to Nicholls State, 6-3, on Feb. 18. During that span, the Tigers have outscored their opponents by 40 runs (65-25) and have scored at least seven runs six times.

With the bats coming to life, the Tigers didn’t need much production from their starting pitchers to sweep their third consecutive weekend series.
They got it anyway.
LSU freshmen pitchers Jake Godfrey and Alex Lange each collected a win and career-long outings Saturday. The two young guns gave up two runs and nine hits in a combined 11 2/3 innings of work.
Godfrey (2-0) notched his second consecutive victory in the afternoon game despite giving up two runs, both of them unearned. Lange (3-0) was once again dominant on the mound, tossing six scoreless innings and fanning six batters to give him 22 strikeouts in his first 16 innings at LSU.
The defense also aided the young pitchers. After two errors Friday night, the Tigers had two errors in two games Saturday. As hot as the bats were, the doubleheader sweep was a team effort.
“Sometimes your pitchers have to pick you up and other times the hitting has got to pick your pitching up,” Bregman said. “This last game, we did a good job of doing both.”
There were plenty of memorable hits in the weekend series, such as Foster and Bregman’s home runs in the fifth inning Saturday night or sophomore outfielder Jake Fraley’s two-triple performance in the afternoon game.
But of the 14 different Tigers who collected a hit Saturday, no one got quite the celebration from the dugout as Bouman.
After the first base umpire signaled the southpaw was safe, his LSU teammates erupted in cheers. But they felt confident he’d reach the bag with little trouble — it seemed like everyone did on Saturday.
“We knew if he put it on the ground, with his blazing speed he’d be safe,” Bregman joked. “I think he ran a 5.86 down the line. That’d be a 5.86 30-yard dash. It was kind of funny.”
You can reach David Gray on Twitter @dgray_TDR