Jay Johnson sends message to teams about LSU: 'We want teams to hate to play us'

LSU baseball head coach Jay Johnson had a simple message for teams playing the Tigers: it’s not going to be fun for you.

LSU is 36-8 on the season and the No. 1 ranked team in college baseball. Safe to say, it hasn’t been easy to play the Tigers. Of the eight losses, five came in the SEC, but that hasn’t slow down the Johnson’s LSU train.

Johnson said he wanted teams to hate to play baseball against LSU.

“We played a Fall game down at ULL, who also has a really good team this year, and we played about as clean as you could play,” Johnson said on Off Campus. “You know, from the pitching side of it, the defensive side of it. We had some home runs, we executed on offense and kind of dominated that day. It was like the first like, you know what you can kind of see it and now if I remember right, Paul Skenes didn’t even pitch that day, because we had shut him down, you know, kind of had a different track and plan in mind with him. 

“But that was probably the first time and then you know, just trying to build confidence in the team that you know, if we play the game the way this team was designed to play it, then somebody’s gonna have to play great to beat us. The few losses that we do have, some of those you have to tip your hat to the opponent and how well they played and, and that’s what we want to do. We want teams to hate to play us. Be very fundamentally sound, and when you do that with talented players you can end up on the right side of things.”

Johnson and LSU is in the middle of a four-game winning streak, including a sweep of Alabama. Although that could have its own issues amid a gambling investigation.

The Crimson Tide fired head coach Brad Bohannon amid a betting scandal, right after the team’s sweep at the hands of LSU.

Multiple states opted to halt bets on Alabama baseball. Ohio was the first to do so, and New Jersey followed suit Wednesday.

The situation got started during the Crimson Tide’s game against LSU on Friday. The Ohio Casino Control Commission reported “suspicious wagering activity” at the BetMGM sportsbook in at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati that day as the two teams were facing off, as ESPN first reported. LSU — an approximately -245 favorite, according to ESPN — led 8-1 in the game before eventually winning 8-6.

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