METAIRIE — Led by the pitching of freshman Clay Dirks and a few timely hits by J.C. Holt, No. 1 LSU (10-1) cruised past the Tulane Green Wave 6-0 on Tuesday night at Zephyr Field.
Dirks, in just his third start of the year, earned the complete game shutout, giving up just four hits.
With the win, Dirks improved his record to 2-0 on the season.
Coach Smoke Laval said he was especially impressed with Dirks’ performance.
“I thought he would compete and line up and pitch,” Laval said. “He made very few mistakes.”
Originally planning to use three pitchers, Laval added that Dirks’ performance kept him in the game.
“The plans weren’t to let him go the whole time,” Laval said. “That’s as well of a pitching job as you can have against a tremendous Tulane club.”
Following a scoreless first two innings, LSU’s Nick Stavinoha broke the silence in the third inning with a one-out single, scoring Holt.
LSU broke the game open in the fourth, scoring four two-out runs. Holt began the rally with a 2-run double to left field, scoring David Hebert and Ryan Patterson, knocking out Tulane’s starting pitcher Brian Bogusevic.
On the next at-bat, LSU’s Matt Liuzza welcomed relief pitcher Daniel Latham with a 2-run home run to left field, giving LSU a 5-0 lead.
Meanwhile, Dirks shut down the Tulane offense, retiring nine straight before giving up a two-out single to Tulane’s Matt Barket in the bottom of the seventh inning.
LSU ended up hitting most of its offensive power from the top three in its lineup, which combined to go 7-for-12 with five RBIs.
Patterson, serving as the leadoff hitter, went 2-for-4. Holt, typically LSU’s leadoff hitter, went 4-for-5 in the No. 2 slot with three RBIs and two runs scored. Rounding out the top three in the lineup was Liuzza, who went 2-for-4 with two RBIs and a run scored.
Dirks, from Hernando, Miss., said he credits the win to the defense behind him.
“Liuzza did a heckuva job behind the plate for me,” Dirks said. “The defense played great when [Tulane] hit the ball.”
Dirks added he was pleased with his performance.
“I gave up a couple of hits, I guess you can’t ask for more,” Dirks said. “They got a couple of weak hits, but that’s baseball.”
With the loss, No. 8 Tulane fell to 8-2 on the year. Tulane coach Rick Jones said he sees a significant difference between this year’s LSU team and past LSU teams.
“This might be the best [LSU baseball team] tonight based on what I saw,” Jones said. “The difference in this LSU club and the ones that were really good in the past is that they can play defense. Tonight, they were better than us. There’s no question about it.”
Jones added he was surprised at such a performance by a freshman pitcher.
“If somebody told me that a redshirt freshman coming off Tommy-John surgery was going to throw a complete game against us tonight, I wouldn’t have believed that,” Jones said. “I didn’t think we had a great night offensively, but that was because of Dirks.”