LSU baseball is set to host its first NCAA Regional in four years, a long layoff for a program that prides itself on College World Series trips.
But the pressure? That's not on this Tigers group, head coach Jay Johnson said, they've been preparing for exactly this moment all season.
"Our approach to the season is every game is a playoff game, and by doing that you put yourself in a position where you have talented players that play well consistently and now you’re playing home baseball at this time of the year," he said on the eve of a showdown with Tulane. "So that’s one phase of it. The other phase of it is now you don’t have to change anything when you get to this point. And if there’s a team that deserves to play with a lot of confidence based on what they’ve done, this team deserves that, because they’ve respected the process to get here. They know what it looks like, and I trust them a lot.”
Still, it's not lost on Johnson what it will mean for the fans at Alex Box Stadium to see home regional action this weekend. That said, Johnson doesn't expect to be surprised by the atmosphere. When your team trots out generational talent like Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews in pivotal SEC series against teams like Arkansas and Tennessee, the crowd is roaring then, too.
“I’m excited we were able to deliver on getting them postseason baseball. It hasn’t happened in four years," Johnson said, "but that’s something that everybody is really excited about.”
LSU and Tulane will face off at 2 p.m., followed by Oregon State-Sam Houston State. The two winners will face off on Saturday, with the losers facing off in an elimination game.
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MORE FROM JAY JOHNSON
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LSU bowed out of the SEC Tournament in disappointing fashion with back-to-back 5-4 losses to Arkansas and Texas A&M. Their final game was marred by a 3-for-20 mark with runners in scoring position. Johnson says there was one obvious culprit for that: Tommy 'Tanks' White was getting a rest day. That won't happen in the NCAAs.
"You get 91 RBIs back on the field and in the lineup. That will help out tremendously," Johnson said, because I have a feeling he’d have come up four times with guys on base. So that will be helpful. I think we just kind of cleared the deck, and again, I’ve said this before. You want to do better in those situations. Winning baseball usually comes down to like six or seven pitches a game. You usually don’t know when they’re coming, but they usually come with guys on base."
There's one other point to consider in that regard, as Johnson explains: "We've been really good for two years, and sometimes it seems like we leave a lot of guys on, but we get more guys on than anybody else in college baseball. And so I think we cleared some things up and I think we’ll be well positioned to do our deal a lot better this weekend. It was a good learning experience, very painful."
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On the regional opponents
Tulane (19-40): This one that we’re playing is playing great right now, what a week they had. ... It’s not even the same. I had literally grabbed my folder and threw it in the garbage and just started watching the last two weeks, and credit to them. They’re very well coached and again, I think I said this the other day, but massive hat tip. They went through some massive adversity last year.”
Oregon State (39-18): Perennially one of the two or three best teams on the west, have a lot of NCAA Tournament success. I mean, they’ve won three national championships in the last 17 years.
Sam Houston (38-23): "It’s like something in the bylaws what whatever regional I’m in they seem to show up in, and that means you’re winning your conference tournament a lot, so they’re good in tournament play. We’ve played them this season, one of the best offenses in the country."
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How has Paul Skenes handled the draft attention?
LSU's star pitcher, who landed a national player of the year honor on Thursday, is widely believed to be one of the top picks in the upcoming MLB draft. It hasn't affected him whatsoever, Johnson says, and the way he's handled it and the success he's had will be a major benefit for the Tigers program going forward.
“It’s not sudden, because he was one of the best pitchers in the country last year and just, people don’t follow Air Force the way they follow LSU, and the Mountain West is not the SEC. ... But I think it’s exciting for me to see that for him because he deserves it and he probably needed the platform to do that, and it’s great for things and it’s opened things up for him that weren’t there a year ago. And I think, like everything else, he handles it as good as a human being can handle it, and that’s going to have a long-term effect on what we’re doing here. Because there’s not another Paul Skenes out there, but there’s another great pitcher that’s probably in a similar situation that watched what happened here, and that’s going to benefit us going forward.”
