It’s getting late early for LSU baseball.
With 14 games to play, the defending national champion is on the ropes. The Tigers are nearly three weeks removed from its last in-conference win and a 24-18 record overall.
For the first time this season, D1Baseball has removed LSU entirely from its NCAA Tournament projection; the Tigers can’t be found anywhere in the field 64, nor in the eight teams that sit on the outside looking in.
This week’s announcements that key players Jake Brown and Cooper Moore will be out for the rest of the year certainly does not help matters. That said, paths still exist for the Tigers to make the postseason.
The chances of those paths manifesting are slim, but here’s how this edition of LSU baseball can avoid being the first team to miss the tournament since 2011.
The most direct path for LSU to make the NCAA tournament would be through winning the SEC tournament. The winner of that secures a spot in the NCAA tournament regardless of record.
Every team in the SEC, regardless of record, gets to make the trip to Hoover, so LSU will be in with a shot at it, no matter how the last four weeks of the season wrap up.
Even with the guaranteed tournament spot, running the table will be difficult. LSU is yet to win the SEC tournament under fifth-year head coach Jay Johnson, even with favorable seeding and byes.
This time around, it’d have to do it with no bye at all, requiring winning five games in a row – in a week. If the season ended today, excluding non-LSU upsets, that path to a SEC crown would have LSU play Vanderbilt, then Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas and Georgia. Certainly not an easy draw.
But, LSU was in a similar position and nearly ran the gauntlet in the tournament two years ago. The Tigers entered 2024’s edition of the SEC tournament as the eleventh seed of twelve that made it. They beat Georgia, then run-ruled third-seeded Kentucky, and took care of South Carolina twice to make the tournament final.
They fell to top-seeded Tennessee in that final, but the late wins were extremely helpful in padding LSU’s resume for the NCAA tournament. It had 13 in-conference wins, but the four wins in tournament play helped with their status as an at-large bid.
Like that team, getting in through a resume rather than an auto-bid will likely be how LSU makes the dance. But it won’t be easy.
The typical benchmark for an SEC team to earn an at-large bid to the tournament is 13 conference wins.
That number may be undershooting what LSU really needs to get in. Tigers’ poor form in midweek games this season has tanked their RPI to No. 63 in the country, and may require them to win 14 conference games or more to be on the bubble for the tournament.
After LSU’s midweek loss to Bethune-Cookman, Derek Curiel said that the loss required two more SEC wins to counteract the negative impact in LSU’s in-house projection.
As a baseline, LSU can’t afford to lose another non-conference game. They have two more of those, against Southeastern and Tulane. Setting the bar for SEC wins to get on the bubble at 14, it certainly has work to do.
Currently, LSU has six SEC wins and 12 SEC games to play. They need to find at least eight wins in those games, which are at Mississippi State and Georgia, and at home against South Carolina and Florida.
Of those games, nine are against teams that are currently ranked. Mississippi State is No. 15 in the country according to D1Baseball, Florida is No. 21 and Georgia is ranked No. 5 in the country.
The easiest path to get to the magic number of eight would start with sweeping South Carolina, a side that carries a worse SEC record and is reeling after the firing of its head coach. From there, LSU needs to win at least two of its other three series and avoid getting swept.
That series of events would get the Tigers to 14 wins, and strengthen their resume to be around the tournament bubble. After that, a strong showing in Hoover could further strengthen their chances.
LSU has been pushed out of the playoff picture more over a disastrous stretch in the last two weeks, and the odds are certainly stacked against it.
But, Johnson believes that this edition of LSU “is actually a more complete skill set of players offensively” than the 2024 LSU team that was in worse shape at this time of the season and was an inning away from playing in a super regional.
The path to climb back into the postseason picture in a similar manner to that team is thinning, but the last chance to start that push begins this weekend.
