LSU baseball survived a scare from Little Rock, but they'll face a very different type of battle when West Virginia rolls into town for the Super Regionals.
The Mountaineers thrive on small ball. Think bunts, steals, if it can muck up the game, you'll see it happen. Speaking on WWL Radio Thursday, Tigers head coach Jay Johnson laid out what his team needs to do to make sure they aren't getting burned.
"They definitely have an identity as a team on offense of, you’ve got to get that leadoff guy out, for sure," Johnson told Mike Detillier and Bobby Hebert, "because they like to bunt, they like to run, cause a lot of chaos, they’re aggressive with their swings towards mistakes and they’re good when they get rolling.”
Hear the full, exclusive interview with LSU head coach Jay Johnson in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
Simple enough, right? LSU is likely to have the edge on the mound, particularly behind the strength of Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson, who combined to throw 16.1 scoreless innings in wins over Little Rock and Dallas Baptist in the Baton Rouge regional.
"I really like the games where I’m writing [Kade Anderson's] name in the lineup card going out there to start the game," Johnson said, "and it’s no secret, baseball hasn’t changed in terms of what winning baseball is, and it starts on the mound and really ends on the mound."
The Super Regional gets started at 1 p.m. Saturday at Alex Box Stadium, followed by a 5 p.m. first pitch on Sunday. If necessary Game 3 will be on Monday at time to be determined.
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MORE FROM JOHNSON
On Casan Evan's massive game
“Good to be on with you guys talking about more baseball this week, and one of the main reasons we have to thank for that is Casan Evans. I’m not surprised. I’m the least surprised person. It was a big recruiting win. Everybody in the country wanted him. We worked really hard to get him. We worked really hard to get him from the professional draft and get him to come to college and it didn’t take long this fall to see that this guy was going to be very important to us and what we’re doing and obviously was spectacular on Monday night and, you know, we did kind of hold him on Sunday because if we needed length and needed a performance like that I was confident he could give it to us.”
On SEC struggles in NCAA Tournament
“They’re good, too, and it has been an interesting tournament. I am very surprised that we only had four team advance, because of going through the schedule, but it’s kind of a double-edged sword because it’s 11 weeks of a pretty stiff and intense grind, and if you don’t come out of that in the right mental space and you’re in a double-elimination tournament, you can get beat and I think that’s what happened a little bit this weeked. That’s why we don’t take a lot of risks as far as throwing off, it took me about 30 minutes of watching Little Rock, of like, OK, we’re gonna start Anthony or Kade, we’re not going to look past this game and I looked pretty smart based on how Little Rock played, you know, in this regional. I just think there’s a lot of good teams. Baseball is different, you know, football and basketball, the team that’s more talented is going to win 90% of the time. Baseball is a little different that way. The team that’s better that day.”