If there was any question heading into this season about LSU’s baseball squad, it was pitching.
The Tigers lost all three weekend starters — Blake Martin, Ryan Verdugo and Jared Bradford — after the season to the MLB. The team also lost Jordan Brown to a career-ending injury and two major pitching recruits to the draft.
But one pitcher decided to stick with the team.
“When Louis Coleman made the decision to come back to school, I knew that would be the difference maker to this team,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri.
Coleman said there were two major factors in his decision to return — the friendships with his teammates and getting back to Omaha after the bitter taste from last season’s trip to College World Series.
That bitter taste comes from the way last season ended for the Tigers.
Coleman gave up a grand slam to North Carolina catcher Tim Federowicz in the top of the ninth inning with the game tied at three on a hanging slider in an elimination game in the CWS.
It was only the second home run the Schlater, Miss., native gave up all season, and it was his first loss on the season.
Coleman, who was named Southeastern Conference Pitcher of the Week this week, has bounced back since that grand slam. This season he has a 2.71 ERA in 76 1/3 innings pitched. He has complied a 9-2 record in 16 appearances with 92 strikeouts.
He has also been the go-to man this season for the Tigers, a role Coleman said he enjoys.
“It give me a lot of confidence because I know they have that much faith in me,” Coleman said. “When the game is on the line, I know they are looking to me. It has nothing to do with pressure or anything, but it gives me a sense of urgency because if I want to get to Omaha, I have to do the things they are counting on me to do.”
Coleman will head into the weekend coming off his best performance of the season — a two-hit shutout against Arkansas.
The Tigers will look for another stunning performance from the senior heading into another big weekend SEC series, this time against SEC-leading Florida.
“You know, I feel like I’ve heard that before this season,” Mainieri said, alluding to the number of times LSU has been in a “big weekend series.”
Despite the end of final exams for LSU and the magnitude of the series with only two weekends of SEC play left, the No. 3 Tigers (36-13, 16-8) will head into this matchup the mentality that it’s just another weekend in the SEC.
“We know the magnitude of this weekend,” said LSU junior first baseman Sean Ochinko. “We know what’s on the line, but nothing changes in our preparation.”
With virtually every team in the conference in a position to make the SEC tournament, Mainieri knows the next two weekends are make or break for the Tigers.
“They don’t give out trophies for anything with six or seven games left in the season,” Mainieri said.
No. 9 Florida (34-15, 16-8) comes into this matchup off a midweek 17-5 loss to Florida Gulf Coast. But the Gators swept then-SEC leading Georgia on the road last weekend and are riding a six-game SEC winning streak.
The Gators, like the Tigers, have won eight of their last nine games.
Ochinko compared the Gators to the Tigers from last season, who won their last 16 regular season games heading into the postseason last year.
“They are playing hot baseball, and we were playing hot baseball at this time last year,” Ochinko said. “We aren’t going to take them lightly.”
 
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