LSU Baseball bringing another title home to Baton Rogue
For the second time in the last four months, it will be a party in Baton Rouge.
On Monday night, the LSU Tigers claimed their seventh college baseball national title with an 18-4 win over the Florida Gators. The program’s first national championship since 2009.
In fact, LSU becomes the first school in NCAA history to win a baseball and basketball national time in the same year.
The win for LSU comes just one day after the Tigers were embarrassed by the Gators 24-4. When Florida took an early 2-0 lead in the first inning on a home run by Wyatt Langford, it looked like the Gators may have been picking up right where they left off on Sunday evening.
The Tigers, however, would bounce back in the next half of the first inning scoring six runs to take the lead, and would never look back. LSU would add on another four in the fourth inning, one in the seventh inning, three in the eighth, and four more runs in the ninth to put an exclamation point on the victory.
Likely a top-three pick in next month’s MLB Draft, Dylan Crews capped off his LSU career in a big way, going 4-for-6 with a triple and one RBI. He finished his season with a .426 batting average, 18 home runs, and 70 RBI.
Tigers star third baseman, Tommy White who will return in 2024 had a big game himself, going 4-for-7 with three RBI. He’ll be one of the most feared hitters in all of college baseball next spring. Brayden Jobert also had four hits on the night, matching White’s 4-for-7 line with three RBI.
The Tigers were prepared to use likely top overall pick Paul Skenes on Monday if necessary, at one point, even warming him up in the bullpen. But his services would not be needed in this one as Thatcher Hurd, Riley Cooper, and Gavin Guidry were all the Tigers would need on the mound to win it all.
With national championship No. 7 under their belts, LSU now has the second most in college baseball history, they were previously tied with Texas with six. Southern California still has a comfortable lead, however with 12 though the Trojans have failed to add to their trophy case since 1998.
The national championship comes in just the second year for head coach Jay Johnson who came to Baton Rogue prior to the 2022 season after spending time at Nevada and Arizona. Johnson had tough shoes to fill entering his tenure at LSU, following in the footsteps of legendary head coach Paul Mainieri who coached the Tigers for 39 years.
It’s safe to say that he is filling those shoes pretty well.
Johnson and the Tigers will celebrate the title win for the next few days, maybe even the rest of the summer but they’ll then get back to work and look to become the first repeat champions since South Carolina did so in 2010 and 2011.
