Brian Kelly, you got next: LSU baseball wins its 7th national title
When Jay Johnson was just 23 years old and a newly-minted college graduate after completing his baseball career at a tiny California college, he decided he wanted to be a college head coach.
He began coaching Connie Mack baseball and quickly realized he didn’t know what he was doing, so he bought an instructional coaching tape called “How To Win The Big One.”
The star and producer of the tape? Five-time LSU national championship head coach Skip Bertman.
Twenty-three years later on a perfect June Monday night in Omaha’s Charles Schwab Field, it can be concluded second-year LSU head coach Johnson made a wise investment buying Bertman’s tape.
A night after Florida scored a College World Series record run total in LSU's game 2 loss in the CWS finals series, the Tigers ignored the devastating defeat. They pounded the Gators 18-4 in the third and deciding contest to win the school’s seventh national championship.
It was LSU’s first national baseball title since 2009. Johnson, hired in June 2021 two months after the school hired Kim Mulkey as the women’s head basketball coach, joined her in winning national championships this season. LSU became the first school to ever win a baseball and a basketball (men's or women's) national title in the same year.
"I really believe this will go down in one of the best teams in college baseball history," Johnson said. "Not only one losing week for an entire regular season. 11 wins in the postseason, six of them against SEC teams. And I really believe we played and beat the best team that we could have played along the way throughout the entire tournament at that spot. So I love these guys. I'm so proud of them. And they are a worthy champion, if there ever was a worthy champion."
Fighting the fatigue of battling out of the losers bracket and falling behind Florida 2-0 in the first inning, LSU combined a sterling starting pitching performance by Thatcher Hurd and 24 hits spread among all 11 Tigers who had an at-bat to record the largest victory margin ever in the CWS championship game.
"When the offense is producing like that, my job is to get them back in the dugout as quick as possible," said Hurd, the sophomore transfer from UCLA who came into his own late in the regular season. "And that feels suffocating for the other team. I just kind of tell myself `Don't give them an inch.' That's what I told myself through the whole outing, get us back, let them do their thing."
LSU (54-17) scored 10 runs in the first four innings and eight runs in the last three innings and even left 18 runners on base. The Tigers, who had runners on base in every inning, had 35 base runners compared to just five for the Gators (54-17). Florida had just five hits, including three homers.
Six LSU batters had multiple hits, led by Golden Spikes Award-winning center fielder Dylan Crews playing his final college game, third baseman Tommy White and right fielder Brayden Jobert with four each.
"Man, it's such a great feeling," said Crews, a junior, who's expected to be the first player taken in July's major league draft. "I feel like almost every box was checked off except that national championship box. And we all knew this was going to be our last game here. And to finally say that I'm a national champion, it's the greatest feeling in the world. And I feel all boxes are checked off now. So it's good."
White, Jobert and shortstop Jordan Thompson, who broke a 1-for-30 CWS batting slump, each drove in three runs. Jobert ended the Tigers’ explosion with a two-run homer in the ninth.
Florida started the game with center fielder Wyatt Langford hitting a two-run homer off Hurd after leadoff hitter Cade Kurland singled.
Those were only hits and runs Hurd allowed in six innings. He silenced the Gators with seven strikeouts as LSU bats battered six Florida pitchers.
"When you start using the same pitchers in the multiple games in the same weekend, so to speak, a three-game series, you kind of get exposed a little bit," Florida head coach Kevin O'Sullivan said. "And I think we probably flirted with a little bit of fire with that.
"Congratulations to LSU. They certainly earned it today. A really good team that played one of their best games all year at the right time. And tip your cap to them."
The fifth-seeded Tigers navigated the toughest of CWS roads to win the natty. They had to beat No. 1 seed Wake Forest twice after losing to the Deacons last Monday and had to put away the second-seeded Gators twice.
Florida appeared to have a decided pitching advantage heading into Monday's winner-take-all game.
The Gators, who won three straight one-run games to advance to the finals series through the winners bracket, had played five games in 10 days and used just eight pitchers in 17 appearances.
Prior to Monday's finale, LSU had played seven games in nine days including four straight last Monday through Thursday and six in the last seven days. The Tigers used 12 pitchers in 22 appearances, leaving Johnson to look long and hard at his short list of available hurlers for the most important game of the season.
He chose Hurd, who threw 112 pitches in two CWS three-inning closing relief stints vs. Wake Forest (65 pitches) last Monday and vs. Wake Forest (47 pitches) last Thursday in the Tigers' 2-0 win in 11 innings that sent LSU to the championship series.
Johnson had staff ace Paul Skenes, college baseball's strikeout leader and national Pitcher of the Year, ready for an emergency relief effort if needed on three days rest.
"Paul's begging me to pitch the ninth," Johnson said "I'm like `Absolutely not. If they get within five we'll get you up and throwing.'"
As it turned out, the most action Skenes got was jumping on the Tigers' celebratory dogpile after freshman reliever Gavin Guidry struck out Florida third baseman Colby Halter for the game's and season's final out.
The victory was extra special to 14 Louisiana natives on the LSU roster, including seven position starters such grad students Cade Beloso and Gavin Dugas who grew up watching past Tigers' national championship teams.
"It feels good to be Mikie Mahtook, Jared Mitchell, Ryan Schimpf and Sean Ochinko now," Beloso said of former LSU stars who won national titles. "No one can take away from us, being national champions.
"We just won the national championship but I'm sad we're not going to practice and play anymore. But, man, I'm going to look forward to those reunions for sure."
Johnson, who said he felt he was on a two-year plan when he took over as coach because that's how many seasons of eligibility Crews had remaining, thanked all of his assistant coaches on his staff last season and this season and a couple of former head coach Paul Mainieri's assistants.
But he saved the best-for-last thank you for the man whose instructional tape he watched all those years ago.
"And the G.O.A.T. himself, Skip Bertman," Johnson said. "We're either in person or on the phone three to four times a week."