There were no fireworks left for the LSU baseball team.
After rallying in the first two games of a three-game series against No. 2 Texas A&M, the No. 1 Tigers went down early against the Aggies and never recovered, falling 6-2 Saturday in a wet and muggy Alex Box Stadium.
LSU (37-7, 14-6 Southeastern Conference), which had already clinched the series with come-from-behind wins Thursday and Friday, never led in the finale, trailing 4-0 after three innings and 5-2 through six en route to just its second loss in the last 16 games.
The Aggies (37-7, 13-7 SEC) took control of the game during a four-run third inning and added runs in the sixth and ninth innings to knock off the Tigers, whose loss snapped a seven-game winning streak.
“It would’ve been nice to finish the job,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “It just wasn’t our day.”
LSU freshman pitcher Austin Bain (1-2, 2.83 ERA), who was making his first weekend start in two weeks, surrendered four runs on four consecutive singles in the game-turning third inning, including a two-run base hit from Aggies junior outfielder Logan Taylor.
The Tigers responded by scoring two runs in the fourth but went scoreless in the final five innings. Sophomore infielder Ryne Birk added to the Aggies’ lead by blasting a solo home run in the sixth, and senior shortstop Blake Allemand ripped an RBI triple in the ninth inning to secure Texas A&M’s only victory of this weekend’s top-two showdown.
LSU finished with more hits than the Aggies (11 to seven) and had at least one batter reach base in eight of the nine innings Saturday. But the Tigers stranded nine base runners and went scoreless in all but the fourth inning.
“Sometimes that’s how the game just works,” said LSU junior shortstop Alex Bregman. “The first two games of the series, they might have swung the bat a little bit better than us, and today we swung it better than them, and they won. It’s part of the game.”
First pitch between LSU and Texas A&M was originally slated for 1 p.m., but it was pushed back when heavy thunderstorms struck Baton Rouge and the Box nearly two hours before the game was scheduled to start.
The game was postponed to 4:15 p.m., and the Tigers, who entered this series as the nation’s No. 3 hitting club, teed off on Aggies junior starter Kyle Simonds (3-1, 1.06 ERA) early but came up empty-handed.
LSU tallied five of its 11 hits in the first two innings but had nothing to show for its work thanks to a pair of run-stopping plays at the plate. Taylor gunned down a runner at home in the first inning and later teamed with Allemand for another out at the plate in the second.
“We were hitting their starter pretty hard early in the game,” Mainieri said. “Maybe if we had jumped out to a 3-0 lead, it might be a different ballgame.”
Bain retired seven of the first eight batters he faced but ran into trouble in a game-changing third inning. After a walk and a fielding error by LSU junior first baseman Chris Chinea, Taylor and the Aggies jumped on Bain with four two-out singles to go ahead 4-0.
After the Aggies’ explosive third inning, Bain didn’t allow a hit until Birk’s homer to right field in the sixth — the only earned run charged to Bain on Saturday. Bain walked the next batter before Mainieri pulled him in favor of freshman pitcher Jake Godfrey. 
“The important thing for me was putting up another zero after that inning, trying to keep the team in the ballgame as much as I could,” Bain said.
After the Aggies’ explosive third, senior designated hitter Chris Sciambra put LSU on board with an RBI single to right field, driving in junior outfielder Andrew Stevenson from second base. Sciambra then scored when Texas A&M junior outfielder J.B. Moss muffed a two-out popup to centerfield.
But that was all the Tigers got, even though minutes earlier it looked like they were going to get a lot more.
Bregman and senior infielder Conner Hale delivered a pair of two-out singles in the first inning to set up LSU senior catcher Kade Scivicque, the SEC’s second-leading hitter entering the weekend. Scivicque chopped a single to left field, but Taylor scooped the ball and gunned down Bregman at the plate to end the inning.
The Tigers experienced a similar scenario in the second. LSU senior second baseman Foster ripped a two-out double down the left field line, but Chinea, who began the at-bat at first base, couldn’t beat the relay throw from Allemand to Aggies junior catcher Michael Barash at home plate.
It set the tone for the rest of the game.
“We’re a team that can come back at any point in the game,” Chinea said. “Things didn’t bounce our way today, and [Texas A&M] played a great ballgame.”
Godfrey relieved Bain with two away in the sixth and continued his improvement of the last three weeks. Godfrey, whom Bain replaced in the weekend rotation April 11, fired two and ⅔ innings of one-run, two-hit baseball. The freshman worked through the sides in the seventh and eighth innings and at one point retired seven straight batters.
Godfrey’s night ended in the ninth after Allemand roped an RBI triple down the right field line.
Sophomore pinch hitter Danny Zardon, the hero of LSU’s 4-3 victory in Game 1 on Thursday, reached first on a throwing error to start the Tigers’ last inning at the plate, but junior pitcher Andrew Vinson forced a fly out and struck out two more to seal the win for the Aggies.
Though Mainieri was pleased with his club winning what’s believed to be the first ever one-versus-two matchup in Alex Box Stadium, he said he thought it could have been a sweep.
“I thought this was a winnable game,” Mainieri said. “The breaks just didn’t go our way today.”
You can reach David Gray on Twitter @dgray_TDR