McNeese State (1-2) hung with No. 7 LSU (4-0) at Alex Box Stadium for a good portion of Wednesday’s game, but the Tigers pulled away late with a deluge of clutch hits, winning 11-4.
It was a different formula for success than what the Tigers showed during opening weekend, when their pitching dominated the visitors.
Clinging to a 5-3 lead, the Tigers pulled away in the sixth. After sophomore left fielder Jackson Slaid struck out to open up the frame, the LSU hitters caught fire.
The next five Tiger batters scored on the strength of four base hits, a walk and an error, turning a close game into a laugher.
But LSU didn’t find as much success from the mound last night, as coach Paul Mainieri went with sophomore Joe Broussard to open the game.
Broussard pitched two innings, giving up three hits and an earned run in the contest.
“We were a lot more shaky on the mound than we were over the weekend,” Mainieri said. “I thought Joe Broussard would really go out there and dominate for a couple innings, but Joe just couldn’t get his fastball down.”
The Cowboys tallied 11 hits off LSU’s “shaky” pitchers, but the Tigers overmatched them with 15 of their own.
“We’ve been working really hard the last couple of days on our hitters hitting the ball up the middle,” Mainieri said. “That’s the kind of team we’re going to have to be. Lo and behold, they started doing that in the second inning.”
After a 1-2-3 first inning, when the top of the LSU order pulled two lazy fly balls to the outfield and bounced a grounder to the third baseman, the offense snapped into opposite field mode.
Junior first baseman Mason Katz led off the inning with a sharp single to right field, followed up by a similar swing from Slaid.
After a sacrifice fly to deep center field by sophomore center fielder JaCoby Jones, senior shortstop Austin Nola knocked in both Katz and Slaid with a two-run single that slipped between the shortstop and the second baseman up the middle of the field.
“In practice, coach is always putting a big emphasis on getting hits when runners are in scoring position,” Slaid said. “We work hard on it in practice, and we’ve been able to implement it in the game pretty well here lately.”
But McNeese wouldn’t go away. The Cowboys regained the lead in the top of the third after freshman Cody Glenn took over for Broussard and promptly gave up two runs in his LSU debut.
Glenn, who admitted he might have been too excited for his first appearance in an LSU uniform, was erratic in his first inning of work.
“He gave up two free passes in the first four batters that he faced and then gave up a two-run double,” Mainieri said. “I don’t know if it’s a matter of being over-amped. You’ve just got to control your emotions.”
But Glenn settled down after his rough first inning, limiting the Cowboys to just two baserunners after the two-run double while striking out four. Glenn earned the win for his three innings of relief.
While the Tigers want to get more out of their midweek pitchers, they should be satisfied on a night when seven different players each tallied an RBI – led by Nola, who knocked in three.
“We stress that every single day in practice — we’ve got to hit one through nine,” Nola said. “We can’t have just three guys getting all the hits.”
 
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Contact Luke Johnson at [email protected]