LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri said Thursday he was hesitant to place senior pitcher Louis Coleman into the weekend rotation because he didn’t want to lose Coleman’s ability to close games.But in the second half of Sunday’s doubleheader against Kentucky, Mainieri got the best of both worlds as Coleman started and closed LSU’s 3-1 win and pitched a complete game four-hitter to lock up the series victory for the Tigers.”As one of the leaders on this team, I have times where I tell guys ‘You have to do things this way,’ or ‘You have to do things that way,'” Coleman said. “This was my time to backup what I have been preaching.”The complete game win was Coleman’s second outing of the weekend as the LSU senior also pitched 2 2/3 innings to close Friday’s 5-3 win.Mainieri said he told Coleman before the game he only expected him to pitch four or five innings in the game.”Not in my wildest dreams did I think he was going to go seven,” said Mainieri.The Tigers jumped out of the gates in the opening inning when junior outfielder Jared Mitchell led off the bottom half of the inning for LSU with a walk. Mitchell then stole second and third base before scoring on a sacrifice fly by freshman third baseman Tyler Hanover to give LSU an early 1-0 lead.Mitchell added stolen bases in the third and fifth innings and is 17-of-17 on the season in stolen bases.The four stolen bases on the day tied a 34-year-old LSU record for most stolen bases in a game.The Wildcats pulled even in the top of the second and scored the first earned run of the season off Coleman on a single by senior first baseman Spencer Korus.That score held up until the fourth inning as Coleman and Kentucky freshman Alex Mayer went stride-for-stride until the bottom half of fourth inning when junior second baseman Ryan Schimpf hit a two-run home run to give LSU a 3-1 lead.”You have to tip your hat to their pitching staff,” Schimpf said. “They have a lot of great arms, and we just have to start to do a better job hitting in the clutch.”GAME ONESenior left-handed pitcher Chris Rusin pitched a complete game six-hitter to spark a 5-2 Kentucky win in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader.”We’ve been seeing him for three years now, and he’s pitched that way everytime we’ve seen him,” Mainieri said.The Wildcats struck for a run in the opening inning to take an early 1-0 lead.Kentucky sophomore second baseman Chris Bisson led off the game with a lead-off double. Bisson scored two batters later on an RBI single by junior outfielder Keenan Wiley.The Wildcats added a pair of runs in the fourth inning on a fielder’s choice ground out by junior outfielder Troy Frazier that scored freshman outfielder Chad Wright. Freshman third baseman Andy Burns also added an RBI single in the inning to stretch the Wildcats’ lead to three runs.LSU’s bats awoke in the bottom half of the fourth, and the Tigers matched Kentucky’s runs with two of their own to again close within a run.Sophomore catcher Micah Gibbs had an RBI double in the rally for LSU. Sophomore centerfielder Leon Landry scored Gibbs in the next at bat and hit an RBI single to right.The runs were the only ones LSU could muster off Rusin who struck out six hitters and threw 93 pitches in his seven innings of work.——Contact Casey Gisclair at [email protected]