GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
If you understand college baseball, you know that mid-week games really do not matter in terms of rankings, seedings and overall significance.
A ranked team will usually not descend in the polls the next Monday after a mid-week loss, so long as it wins its weekend series. Happens almost all the time.
No. 2 LSU (3-0) opens its mid-week season on Tuesday afternoon at Alex Box Stadium at 2 p.m. against Baton Rouge neighbor Southern (2-1). Mid-week games are glorified practices, but they are useful to coaches for finding out who can play and – in particular – who can pitch. They are also important for players to get a chance to show what they can do if they’re not playing regularly on the weekend. For those who are regular weekend players, they need mid-week games somewhat to stay sharp.
LSU coach Jay Johnson, though, is taking today’s game more seriously than most mid-week games because of what happened last year. Southern beat the Tigers, 12-7, last April 1, and it was no April Fool’s joke. The loss was the Tigers’ fourth straight and dropped them to 20-10 after they were swept at No. 1 Arkansas to fall to 2-7 in the SEC on their way to a 3-12 league start.
That was just LSU’s fourth loss to Southern against 59 wins since the series began in 1970.
“I mean, Southern beat the crap out of last year,” Johnson said Sunday in the postgame broadcast after beating Purdue-Fort Wayne, 8-1, to sweep the three-game series. “So, we’ve got to get ready to go.”
Southern improved to 12-13 at the time with that win over the Tigers before finishing 22-29 and 15-12 in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
Left-hander Kade Anderson, then a freshman and now the Tigers’ Friday night starter, started that Southern game and lost it, allowing three hits and three runs in two innings. That included a three-run home run to Tyeler Hawkins in the second inning that put the Jaguars up 3-0. Southern added a home run and had 11 hits to four by the Tigers.
“We’ve got to change the way we prepare, clearly,” Johnson said after that game. “There are a lot of things that will fall directly on me as the head coach, and I’m OK with that. I believe in how we do and what we do, and we’re going to make some adjustments to those things. Not just from a baseball standpoint, but from an approach standpoint to winning. We’re going to change some rules up, and go from there.”
LSU would regroup and finish 43-23 and 13-17 and reach an NCAA Regional at North Carolina, coming within one win of reaching a home Super Regional. But the loss still gets to Johnson.
He brought it up during a Tiger Rag Radio appearance last week.
“I’d like to remind everyone that we lost to Southern last year,” he said.
ESPN/SEC Network baseball announcer Kyle Peterson brought up the Southern loss last season to Johnson before another game.
“Congratulations,” he told Johnson.
“For what?,” Johnson said.
“You joined Skip Bertman and Paul Mainieri by losing to Southern,” Peterson said.
Bertman’s Tigers lost to the Jaguars in Bertman’s last season in 2001 at Alex Box Stadium, 11-6, after winning his fifth national championship the previous season. Mainieri lost at Southern, 7-2, in 2019, 10 years after winning his national title. LSU coach Smoke Laval also lost to Southern in 2005 at LSU.
“Chris Crenshaw does a great job there,” Johnson said of Southern’s coach. “We’re really excited for the opportunity to play this week and continue to develop our team.”
After Southern, LSU plays at Nicholls State on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. before hosting Omaha Friday through Sunday at 4 p.m., 2 p.m. and 1 p.m.
Johnson has not named starting pitchers for Southern or Nicholls State.
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