PREVIEW
After Saturday night’s big win over Arkansas, LSU now looks forward to Monday night’s winner’s bracket matchup against the Bruins from UCLA.
No. 15 UCLA (48-16) took on Murray State in its first game of the College World Series. The Bruins almost let their lead slip away but were able to hold on for a 6-4 win over the Racers.
UCLA recorded nine hits during the game Saturday afternoon, but surprisingly star shortstop Roch Cholowsky was held to a hitless outing.
Cholowsky is the leader of this team. If the Tigers can limit his success, they should have a very solid chance at shutting this Bruin offense down.
Cholowsky is the Big Ten player of the year and recorded an incredible .362 batting average with 19 doubles, a triple, 23 home runs and 74 RBIs.
Cholowsky was also named a finalist for the NCBWA’s Dick Howser Trophy, which recognizes College Baseball’s best player.
UCLA seems to play a lot like West Virginia in how it executes its small-ball style offense, with lots of bunts, stealing bases, etc.
Another interesting part about this UCLA ball club is its pitching staff. The Bruins have a 4.40 cumulative ERA as a pitching staff while also striking out 502 batters. This staff is deep in the sense of experience. 15 different pitchers for the Bruins have pitched 17.0 complete innings this season.
LSU had a practice Sunday afternoon where the team worked on defending the small-ball type of style and just being ready for anything thrown at them.
“The vibe of the team was really good today, really good yesterday and just have a good sense of knowing who they need to be when they need to be it,” LSU Head Coach Jay Johnson said.
This big stage of playing at Omaha is nothing new for LSU, but for a lot of these guys on the team, it is new.
“I mean, obviously there are a lot of fans out there, but at the end of the day it’s just baseball,” redshirt sophomore pitcher Chase Shores said. “You just got to go back to your preparation, and I think when I was running out there, I was kind of just pretending it was like I was at Alex Box.”
So from the sounds of it, the Tigers are just worried about playing their game.
It was announced Sunday afternoon that the pitching matchup between the two teams will be LSU’s Anthony Eyanson against UCLA’s Landon Stump.
For Jay Johnson, he is trying to make it all the way through the winner’s bracket for the first time in his career. In order to do that, the Tigers need to beat the Bruins.
First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday night and will be streamed live on ESPN.
