Jay Johnson reveals his emotions of making College World Series Finals

LSU baseball is through to the championship playoff in the College World Series after beating Wake Forest for a second straight time this week after losing in their first contest on Monday. After that defeat, LSU dropped down into the loser’s bracket of their pod but rallied back up to face Wake again and beat ’em back-to-back to book their ticket to the finals vs. Florida.

After such a hectic couple of days in Omaha, head coach Jay Johnson finally got some time to reflect on this wild and ongoing run for the Tigers. In the postgame following the second win over Wake Forest, Johnson was asked about his emotions on making the championship series. Since it had just happened, he really hadn’t had much time to ponder it, but did give a long answer praising his team and explaining how this was their goal from day one.

Take a look at Jay Johnson’s full comments on the Tigers making the title series right down here:

Jay Johnson says championship has always been the goal

“Yeah, I think — I haven’t thought a lot about that just yet. We immersed ourselves in the present moment. And going into the NCAA Tournament, we talked about — this team’s had to deal with a lot of this thought of perfect because of their talent and expectations. John Wooden used to say: winning is just about playing near your capability all the time.

“And I think we really settled in. We haven’t tried to do too much. And we really stayed in the moment. I think that was exhibited really well, which is why Paul pitched the first game of the NCAA Tournament. I’d be a hypocrite if I said that and you don’t lead with your ace against a team that was playing its best baseball. And so that was done for that reason.

“I just think we’ve been so immersed in that, now that this is here, it’s not a surprise. I will tell you this is the first time I’ve ever coached that I believed could win a national championship, hands down.

“So, in a meeting (before the season), I asked: what do you want to do? Like, literally me asking them, what do you want to accomplish? And it was kind of quiet. I was like, no, we want a national championship. It came out of Dylan’s mouth. Are you sure? And then it’s quiet. No, wait a minute, we’ve got to be really sure if this is what we’re going to try to go do.

“We put it up there, and just basically our road to the top. And then it wasn’t about doing that, now it was about how are we going to do it, every step along the way. Both within the program and controllable things of are we going to be selfless? Are we going to have a strong mental game where we can recover from failure, resist the urge to be complacent?

“And then it’s into the baseball stuff, because the game doesn’t change of what’s required, and then we outline the things from the mound, defensively, offensively from the bases, that we felt like would be required to attain that long-term goal and laid it all out. And these guys have stuck to it every single day.“