At 9:59 p.m., LSU right-handed reliever Collin Strall threw ball four to Southeastern Louisiana second baseman Carson Crites, which walked in a run and cut the No. 5 Tigers’ lead to 4-2.
It was the first and only pitch Strall tossed, and the the top of the third inning had not been completed. At that point, the contingent of Lion faithful were more vocal than the remaining LSU fans at Alex Box Stadium.
After a two-hour, 24-minute weather delay, starting with two outs in the top of the third, LSU (26-11, 9-6 Southeastern Conference) finally wiggled its way out of a bases loaded jam with a one-run lead.
But the Tiger offense, aided by the Southeastern Louisiana defense, quickly regained a three-run cushion en route to a 11-4 victory, which ended 12:18 a.m. Thursday.
In the eighth inning, sprinklers in left field turned on around 12:04 p.m., furthering what was a long and strange night for LSU coach Paul Mainieri’s club. Junior second baseman Cole Freeman even asked Mainieri if his “midnight rule,” which calls for players to put the previous game behind them, still applied.
“Freeman of course asked, ‘Is it midnight tomorrow night?’” Mainieri mimicked his player. ‘Like, tonight, I mean?’”
With Mainieri harping on focus being critical to midweek victories, LSU jumped out to a four-run advantage off of three unearned runs in the first inning and added another run in the second, tagging Lion starting pitcher Pat Cashman for three unearned runs in the first.
After freshman right fielder Antoine Duplantis reached on a leadoff error and junior center fielder Jake Fraley followed with a single, LSU notched RBIs in three of its next four at-bats.
Freeman ripped a one-out triple in the second inning and later scored on a wild pitch. With a 3-for-4 night, Freeman picked up his third three hit game of the season, tying a career-high.
LSU sophomore right-handed starter Doug Norman retired all six hitter he faced, but junior right-hander Riley Smith replaced him and ran into trouble. Smith recorded the first two outs with a strikeout and a fly out, but Southeastern Louisiana leadoff hitter Brenna Breaud drove a two-out single, putting men on first and second.
Then, Smith walked the next two hitters he faced, forcing in a run.
Falling behind in the count to Crites, LSU coach Paul Mainieri pulled Smith for sophomore right-hander Collin Strall. Umpires halted the game before Strall could throw a pitch, requiring the Tigers to maintain the focus it initially brought to the field more than two hours earlier.
“It take a little bit [more focus], especially when it’s a two-and-a-half-hour break,” Freeman said. “Everybody’s in there playing ping pong and stuff. Like I said, it’s showing maturity. We were able to lock in whenever we need to. You look up at the scoreboard and we scored in every inning but two.”
Despite the rain-elongated third inning, which resulted in three runs off of five walks, LSU struck back with two runs in the bottom half of the inning. Five of the six Tiger runs up to that point were unearned.
LSU then manufactured its seventh run in the fourth off two singles, a sacrifice bunt and junior catcher Jordan Romero’s RBI sacrifice fly. Following two walks to start the sixth, sophomore Greg Deichmann stretched LSU’s lead out to six runs, stinging a three-run home run over the right-field wall.
“Usually, if it’s like 30 minutes or something, you can focus back up,” Deichmann said of the delay. “But, when you kick your cleats off, lay on the couch for a little bit, watch some T.V., it gets a little hard to focus back up. We did a good job of getting out of that jam right there and putting some runs back up on the board right when we got back out here. So, that kinda kept the energy up and kept the focus up.”
Though he walked in a run in the third and surrendered back-to-back singles to start the fourth, Stallings retired six of the next seven he faced. The only damage the second-year hurler was responsible for was Crites’ solo blast into the left-field bleachers.
After Stallings, four LSU relievers held the Lions scoreless over the last four innings, allowing just two hits in that period. Southeastern Louisiana first baseman Jameson Fisher, who led the nation in batting average, finished the night 0-for-3 at the plate with with two strikeouts.
Sophomore catcher Michael Papierski put the final nail in the coffin with a solo home run in the eighth inning, his second dinger of the season.
“I thought they way we responded to them scoring the three runs with all the walks, to come back the next inning, was critical,” Mainieri said. “You don’t do things like that if the guys aren’t focused, bearing down and really into the ball game. They could have just gone through the motions, and we could have ended losing this ball game. Instead, they played hard right until the end. I was really proud of that. They just had great desire to win tonight.”