Over the past few years, LSU baseball has developed a trend of battling a second weekend loss. Losses are uncertain during the course of a season, but year after year, the first losses all connect back to the same weekend.
“You know, we’ve seen this happen,” head coach Jay Johnson said. “We’ve actually had kind of a game like this the second weekend three years in a row here, which is frustrating for the leader, but there’s plenty to identify.”
LSU lost to Omaha this year, Stony Brook in 2024 and Iowa in 2023.
Against Omaha, the Tigers were not able to capitalize on scoring opportunities throughout the game in the first few innings. A poor relief effort and cold hitting left the team short a run. They would beat Omaha 12-1 in the second game of a doubleheader.
The level of focus each player brings impacts the execution in each inning. Despite six free bases in the first two innings, LSU struggled to get a hit until the eighth and a run until the ninth.
“Sometimes I felt like there was a little bit of frustration that carried over from one at bat to the next,” Johnson said. “We have to be better than that, we have to make it through tougher stretches a little bit better to be an elite team.”
Competing with Stony Brook, LSU could not capitalize offensively. They were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and 1-for-14 with runners on.
“We allowed their pitcher to kind of get his confidence back, you don’t want to do that to a good pitcher,” Johnson said after the game. “For Thatcher, it forced him out to the mound pretty fast, and I think that’s where we gave up the one run right there, he sort of lost command.”
Playing against Iowa, LSU also struggled batting with runners in scoring position. The Hawkeyes had four times as many hits as the Tigers, with 16.
Most notably, these two previous seasons ended in totally different fashions. In 2024, the Tigers lost in extra innings to North Carolina in the regional round. In 2023, the team took home the College World Series title.
After the loss to Omaha, Johnson referenced a conversation he had with Dylan Crews.
“You know what you have right after you lose a game,” Johnson said. “That team, we were always right back on it.”
LSU won in extra innings against Kansas State on Friday and came from behind to beat both Nebraska on Saturday and North Dakota State on Tuesday. Time will tell if this team has the fire of that 2023 championship lineup.
