Sandwiched between two of the No. 8 LSU baseball team’s biggest series of the season, Nicholls State wasn’t expected to provide the Tigers with much of a challenge.
But in their first road game of the season, the Tigers (16-1) were down by multiple runs for much of the game before a late scoring barrage put them ahead for good in a 12-8 victory against the Colonels (7-8).
With the game knotted at eight in the eighth inning, freshman JaCoby Jones ripped an RBI triple in what proved to be the game winning hit. LSU tacked on three more runs to push its lead to 12-8.
“In those later innings we had some tremendous at-bats in clutch situations, and we were able to come through in the end,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said in a news release.
Pitchers Ryan Eades and Matty Ott managed to avoid a Colonels rally, posting two scoreless innings to finish the game.
Junior pitcher Tyler Jones — who came into the game with a sterling 2.84 ERA and a 3-0 record this season — didn’t help LSU’s cause early.
Jones didn’t record an out in a six-run first inning for the Colonels, as he allowed two hits and three walks before being lifted in favor of freshman Joe Broussard.
Despite relieving Jones in the first inning, Broussard saved the LSU bullpen with six strong innings of relief work, holding the Colonels to one run on five hits with seven strikeouts.
“The story of the game was the performance of Joe Broussard,” Mainieri said. “Tyler Jones just didn’t have it, but Joe came in and pitched amazingly well, and I thought he really inspired our lineup.”
Before his six innings of relief work against Nicholls, Broussard’s longest outing of his college career was 1 2/3 innings.
Broussard’s performance was needed, as the LSU offense was playing catch up for much of the early part of the game.
The Tigers fought back with three runs in both the third and sixth innings while Broussard was stifling the Nicholls State bats, but LSU just couldn’t seem to put the pesky Colonels away.
After snagging its first lead of the game with the three-run sixth, Nicholls scored its first run since the first inning to tie the ballgame up at seven.
LSU came right back in the seventh inning with back-to-back base hits by juniors Tyler Hanover and Mikie Mahtook, with Hanover scoring on a triple by Mahtook. But Nicholls continued to stride evenly with the Tigers.
LSU freshman pitcher Jimmy Dykstra (3-0) picked up the win in relief despite allowing a run in the bottom of the seventh,
The Tigers collected 15 hits in the game, with eight of nine starters collecting at least one hit.
 
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Contact Luke Johnson at [email protected]