The 2023 college baseball season is over. LSU is a national champion for the 7th time. Now head coach Jay Johnson is finally willing to pull the curtain back.
When he took the podium Wednesday evening at Alex Box Stadium he apologized for not preparing much, because he was busy working on the 2024 season. He then went on to give a detailed look at exactly what went into the team meeting on Jan. 14 that set an epic season in motion.
He then finished with probably his most important quote.
"State of Louisiana, LSU, you have my entire heart," he said. "There’s nowhere in the world I want to coach baseball than right here, right now. I love you guys.”
But prior to that, Johnson spoke to the fans in attendance about that aforementioned team meeting where the goal was laid out clearly: Win a national championship. From there it was just solving the mystery of how to get there. But no one will be able to tell the story better than Johnson himself, so below is the entire transcript of his speech to the thousands of Tigers fans in attendance in Baton Rouge.
“I did want to peel back the curtain and talk about this team a little bit, because this was a special journey. On January 14 we had a meeting, which was the day before we could start practice or training as we call it, the spring. And we came up with just a thought process, and we titled it ‘the road to the top.’ And I’ll be honest, this is the very first team that I’ve coached from Day 1 that I believed could win a national championship. And on that day, on January 14, I just asked a very simple question, like, ‘what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish?’ And it was very clear and very serious, ‘coach, we’re going to win a national championship.’
"And so I start with that because it’s very easy to know you have a good team or a talented team. It’s an entirely different thing to commit to it every single day and then follow that road step by step to the top. And as I said on Monday night, it was more gratifying because we didn’t just win the national championship on Monday night, these guys were national championship people and players every day of the 2023 season.
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“So, in that meeting, once we decided that’s what we wanted to do, we broke it down very simply. What did we need to do to do that? We wanted to play a brand of baseball that you, our fans, the best fans in college baseball, this university, the entire state, could be incredibly proud of. So, right now, I want you to give these guys a hand, because that’s exactly what they did.
“So, what did they do? They played with great fundamentals. We had the best offense in college baseball. We led the country in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, runs. And I don’t know if there’s ever been a team that’s more exciting to watch with the style that they played offense. It was a pitching staff that struck out 798 guys over the entire season.
“They competed. And what does competing mean? To us, it meant simply this: I wanted them to value winning more than anybody else that sat in that dugout across from us. And I think if you saw this team on a night in to night out basis, nobody valued winning more than the 2023 Tigers, and that was demonstrated every pitch of every inning of the entire game and led to 54 wins.
“Lastly, we talked about character, having the ability to make the right decisions both on and off the field and represent you in a way that you deserved to be represented. We talked about being a no-drama program, and you didn’t hear one thing about one player for an entire school year doing anything other than something positive for this university.
“The physical talent, borderline unmatched. We talked about wanting to dominate the mental game. What did that mean? Staying in the moment, so much so, like, I didn’t really realize we were going to win the national championship until one out in the ninth inning the other night, because we were so locked in on staying in the moment.
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"Recovering from failure. I think they lost two games in a row two times all year. And when you think about the schedule we played, that’s borderline remarkable. They resisted the urge to be complacent, and I don’t think you ever saw them take a night off in terms of doing what they needed to do to win. They played to a standard above winning. They were the most selfless group of players in America, which I wanted to highlight. Hayden Travinski, stand up for a second. I’m pretty sure this guy had a pretty good NCAA regional here. I’m pretty sure he had a good Super Regional, and he did not start a game through the first 25 games of the season, and not one time that we all saw his talent, did he ever question ‘why am I not playing?’ He just kept working, getting better, improving and when it was his time, boy it was his time.
“Alex Milazzo, where you at. The guy’s got a broken leg and he’s standing up right now. Give him a hand. I’m not sure there’s a better defensive catcher in the country, but we have a lot of catching talent … who all contributed to this national championship. But again, [Milazzo] wasn’t playing every day right from the start, but never wavered. Caught a phenomenal College World Series once Hayden and Brady [Neal] were both hurt. And how about this guy’s offense? He was on base is first three at-bats of the national championship game the other night and hit over .290.
"So, I bring that up because being selfless was a big part of this deal. And how did we define selfless with this team? We didn’t have to look too far because you have two of the greatest coaches in college baseball history with Skip Bertman and Paul Mainieri. How we define being selfless was the way that they got their players to be selfless and their stories of Kurt Ainsworth redshirting and then becoming a pitcher on one of Coach Bertman’s great teams. Mikie Mahtook and Austin Nola didn’t start at the beginning of their freshman year on the 2009 national championship team. So we took some of those examples all throughout the program on the teams that hung the flags, that had numbers up on the intimidator and said if they can do it, we absolutely can do it, and that’s what it’s going to take to win a national championship. So again, give this team a hand for being the most selfless team in America.
“It’s really hot out here so I’ll finish with this: At the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Alabama, we lost two 5-4 games in the SEC Tournament, didn’t feel like we were playing our best baseball. Had a team meeting — [the players] had a team meeting as well — and we just talked about two things. For the next 4 weeks, make sure you have the right head, the right heart, we’re five wins away from the College World Series, we’re 10 from a national championship, even though it actually took 11, and they absolutely did it. So give these guys one more hand as the national champions of 2023.”
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