After being swept last weekend at South Carolina, LSU had a stellar performance here in Baton Rouge.
Freshman AJ Labas pitched nine shutout innings with nine strikeouts as LSU beat Lamar 8-0.
“I reflect on the time that he pitched out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam, and I think that was a critical time in the game,” Head Coach Paul Mainieri said. “It gave him a lot of confidence. We needed it. We needed him to pitch like that desperately, and he answered the bell for us.”
The Tigers also had a familiar face return tonight as sophomore Josh Smith made his first appearance after a back injury earlier in the season.
Smith went 2-3, including a home run to further the Tigers’ lead.
“I didn’t even have an opportunity to get him at-bats against live-pitching like I had planned on doing.,” Mainieri said. “He just went in there cold turkey. The only thing he’d done was take two days of batting practice, and today, his only BP was half an hour before game time in the batting cages with me throwing to him. He jumps in there and smokes a couple of balls, had a great at-bat against the left-hander drawing a walk and he just looked like he hadn’t skipped a beat.”
The Tigers are headed to Oxford, Mississippi tomorrow as they face Ole Miss in three games this weekend.