The LSU baseball team finally broke through against Auburn. 
After being held to less than four runs and eight hits in consecutive games, No. 3 LSU jumped all over Auburn in a series deciding rubber match, stomping the visitors 6-2 Sunday afternoon at Alex Box Stadium. 
LSU (31-6, 10-5 Southeastern Conference) didn’t have more than seven hits in either of the first two games of the series but tallied seven through four innings Sunday. The six runs the team scored were two more than the previous two games combined. 
LSU scored runs in the game’s first three innings after doing so in just three of the previous 17. LSU’s bounce-back game on offense helped it win a series that never saw freshman pitcher Alex Lange, who missed his start this weekend with tightness in his arm. 
“If you would’ve told me before the weekend began that we would’ve won a series and Alex Lange wouldn’t have thrown one pitch for us, I probably wouldn’t have been that upset about it,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. 
LSU senior outfielder Chris Sciambra and junior outfielder Mark Laird each collected a pair of hits against Auburn (21-15, 5-10 SEC), which dropped its fourth SEC series of the season, and four LSU batters drove in a run. 
The visitors, however, couldn’t get much going offensively. LSU’s pitching staff held Auburn to three hits through the first five innings and didn’t allow a run until the sixth. 
LSU senior pitcher Zac Person (2-0, 3.60 ERA) picked up the win in a career-long outing, while Auburn senior Rocky McCord (2-3, 4.34 ERA) earned the loss after giving up six runs in two innings of work. 
Person, normally a reliever, pitched a career-best three innings and held Auburn scoreless on one hit. He retired the first four batters he faced and nine of 12 overall. Person also fanned two batters, the second of which left an Auburn runner on base in the third. 
“[Pitching coach Alan] Dunn told me, ‘Your job is to get three outs before a run scores, and if we send you back out there, get three outs before a run scores,’” Person said. “He told me to do that as many times as we give you                  the ball.”  
LSU sophomore right-hander Parker Bugg relieved Person to start the fourth and gave up one run in a season-long four innings. Freshman pitcher Jesse Stallings replaced Bugg to begin the eighth and allowed three hits and a run before retiring the side in the ninth to wrap up the series win for LSU. 
While Mainieri’s pitchers took care of business on the mound, his batters started the game with a bang. 
LSU tallied three hits in the first inning — half of what it had in a full nine against ace Keegan Thompson the day before. 
Sciambra and Laird both delivered doubles, and Laird’s drove in the game’s first run. Junior first baseman Chris Chinea then picked up his 29th RBI of the season on a groundout to short that put LSU ahead, 2-0, after one. 
Auburn had a chance to even the game in the second. After Person hit a batter with one away, sophomore third baseman Kyler Deese singled to centerfield to move a runner to scoring position. But Person got consecutive batters to fly out to Laird in right field to end the threat. 
LSU put the game of out of reach in the third. McCord gave up a single, walked a batter and hit another to load the bases before the inning’s first out. 
LSU senior catcher Kade Scivicque then extended his hitting streak to 20 games with an RBI single, and McCord gave up another run on a wild pitch to make it 5-0. 
A fielding error by Deese allowed another runner to score and pitted Auburn in a 6-0 hole it never climbed out of. 
“We tried to get out in front early, and we did that,” Laird said. “We had some runners in scoring position that we didn’t drive in … but our bullpen pitched great.”  
You can reach David Gray on Twitter @dgray_TDR.