Breaking down LSU baseball’s possible path to an SEC championship

Here’s what LSU’s road to an SEC title could look like.

After the dust settled on the regular season, the LSU Tigers wound up as the No. 3 seed in the conference tournament. That means that the Tigers will play their first game at 9:30 a.m. CT on Wednesday morning. Here, we’re going to take a look at the Tigers’ possible road to an SEC title.

In Game 1, LSU will play the winner of South Carolina vs Georgia, two teams that LSU is familiar with. The Tigers just beat UGA last weekend as they took two out of three games in the series. LSU split its series with South Carolina on the road, but this Carolina team isn’t the same as the one LSU split with.

The Gamecocks have been bitten by the injury bug and have been struggling recently. Carolina swept Georgia in a three-game series earlier this year, and I think they will win that game.

By that logic, I have LSU playing South Carolina in its first game. Here is the biggest question, though: Who starts game one?

To win the SEC championship, you have to win four games, minimum. LSU would have to go 4-0 to win the title. If you lose one game, you fall into the losers bracket. If that happens, you’ll play an extra game.

We all know the situation with LSU’s pitching staff. There’s [autotag]Paul Skenes[/autotag], [autotag]Ty Floyd[/autotag], and who knows who is third?

I say all of that to make this point — do you start your ace in the first game of the tournament? Your star pitcher will only get one start. Why start him against the team that should (theoretically) give you the least amount of trouble?

You can start him in the next game against either Arkansas/Tennessee/Texas A&M. If you win the first two games, you get a day off on Friday. So I think you’d want him to pitch in one of the first two games. In my opinion, I’d start Floyd against South Carolina and throw Skenes in Game 2, but I’m not [autotag]Jay Johnson[/autotag]. He could just throw them in order.

Let’s say the Tigers win Game 1, LSU would advance to play either Arkansas, Tennessee or Texas A&M on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. Again, you’re looking at either Skenes or Floyd on the mound for this one.

I think Tennessee will beat A&M, so it would be Tennessee against Arkansas in Game 6 to decide who plays LSU. They played a series against each other earlier this season, and Arkansas swept the Vols. I’ll go with Arkansas vs. LSU in Round 2.

LSU took the series against Arkansas at the start of the year, but things are different now.

Assuming that LSU wins that game, the Tigers would have Friday off and would rest up for a game on Saturday at noon. Again, you are looking at playing either Arkansas, Tennessee, or South Carolina. Tennessee just beat Carolina last weekend so I will give them the nod for Game 9.

Then it’s Arkansas vs. Tennessee again. I’ll go with Arkansas, again. So, we get an Arkansas vs. LSU rematch for a spot in the SEC championship game. That game is a single-elimination game. There is no losers bracket if you lose that one.

I have no clue who would be on the mound for LSU. If the Tigers lose that game, they’re headed home, but for the sake of this article, we will assume that LSU wins.

LSU would then advance to the conference championship game on Sunday to face (likely) the Florida Gators. Florida is on a roll right now and they are the No. 1 seed in the tourney for a reason. There is an outside chance that Vandy or Auburn could be a spoiler, but I think it will be Florida.

I have no idea how many arms the Tigers would have left to throw this game with all of the injuries. I figure that Game 3 would be a bullpen game as well.

How do you manage all of those guys in order to win a championship? That is something that Johnson will have to figure out.

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