“I have a broken heart tonight, because I wanted to go to practice with these guys on Wednesday.”
That’s what a dejected LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson said following a season-ending 4-3 loss in 10 innings to North Carolina on Monday night in a winner-take-all game for the Chapel Hill Regional.
This baseball team took Tiger fans on a ride. There was the 3-12 start in SEC play, but then a near SEC Tournament Championship victory, then sitting two outs from a Regional Championship.
Give credit to North Carolina, they got the big hits and made the plays to send the defending champs home.
There will be second guessing of Johnson for bringing in starting pitcher Gage Jump to get the final three outs.
You’re asking Jump to do something he has not done all season after throwing 105 pitches on Friday. Johnson said he wanted to have his best pitcher on the mound when it mattered the most.
“We set this plan in motion before we came here and [UNC] executed,” Johnson said.
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North Carolina third baseman Gavin Gallaher, who played a gold glove third base during the regional, greeted Jump with a double down the left field line.
The Tigers, leading 3-2 much of the game, saw Gallaher score the tying run two batters later after an RBI single.
LSU got a one-out single in the bottom of the 9th inning, but couldn’t push the winning run across the plate.
Jump got the first two outs in the 10th inning, but freshman right fielder Jake Brown dropped a fly ball on the warning track to put the go-ahead run on second and Alex Madera drove him in.
In the bottom of the 10th inning Jared Jones worked a two-out walk and advanced to second on a stolen base but Josh Pearson’s drive into the center field landed in the glove of Vance Honeycutt to end LSU’s season.
This game will be remembered for three things: Johnson’s decision to remove Nate Ackenhausen, Brown’s dropped fly ball and Will Hellmers’ ascendant pitching performance.
The former Jesuit ,star who played a little third base in his freshman season, threw 5.2 innings of scoreless baseball. Hellmers, who only threw in 17 innings for the entire season, allowed just two hits.
“Obviously nobody wants to walk away with tears in their eyes and a broken heart, but it means a lot to me to just give us chance in those four-five innings," Hellmers said. "I threw and that’s all I was trying to do.”
Hellmers didn’t have the individual success he hoped for at LSU, but that's not what was important Monday evening in Chapel Hill.
“It means the world to me to wear this gold jersey with LSU on the front," Hellmers said. "it’s not about the name on the back, it’s about the name on the front. It says Tigers across our chest ... and I’m a Tiger for life.”
LSU’s season didn’t end in Omaha, but they went down as Fighting Tigers.