Jay Johnson reveals LSU approach in elimination game vs. Little Rock

In the end, the Baton Rouge Regional ended up with host LSU winning. That wasn’t a surprise but Tigers head coach Jay Johnson knows his team was nearly eliminated at the hands of Little Rock in what would have been a massive upset.

After the game on Monday, Johnson explained that even though the Tigers face elimination, there wasn’t panic. Instead, his team remained focused as much as possible on the task at hand.

“I didn’t watch any games today,” Jay Johnson said. “I literally did not turn the TV on in my office, I have no idea who won, who lost, any of that type of stuff, by design. The approach today was a little bit different. I actually brought something back from my past I did at Arizona when we would host and play really late games. I actually brought them in early in the day as kind of like, hey, this is a checkpoint type deal.”

LSU faced elimination going into the day on Monday after being upset by Little Rock on Sunday. It was an easy position to be tight about. However, from Johnson’s perspective, the Tigers didn’t need any motivation at all for the day.

“They didn’t need any motivation today. It was actually pretty cool. Actually just wrote on the board the lineup. I wanted everybody to know the lineup early. I wanted everybody to know the pitching plan,” Johnson said. “And the guys on the bench, next to each name I wrote down what their job was tonight. It was pretty cool to actually see the game play out the way it did.”

Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly for Johnson, the gameplan that he laid out on the board largely came true. Even with Little Rock putting up five runs in the second inning, the Tigers were able to focus on that gameplan and slowly comeback to get the win and move to the Super Regionals.

“It’s as simple as Ashton Larson, you’re going to pinch-hit it when there’s runners on base. There was two outs, man on first, and he drew a walk, which set the table for the big hit of the night, which was Ethan [Frey’s] double with bases loaded. Jake Brown advancing on the ball in the dirt, which we were going to anticipate because Jared was hitting behind them, they were going to try to do sliders down. He advanced on the ball in the dirt, ended up scoring a huge run right there. Obviously, Casan [Evans’] performance speaks for itself, and the thought was they would not be able to adjust to his tempo and aggressiveness following Zac [Cowan],” Johnson said.

“It was really cool. It was really just about all we talk about is how we play. And this is about execution. It’s really boring for you guys. You can’t write a story on execution, but that’s all the game was about. We felt like we had a good plan, and I’m proud of them for going out and executing it tonight.”

Now, Jay Johnson and LSU are going to look to maintain their focus moving forward. In the Super Regional, they’ll again be hosting, this time as they welcome the West Virginia Mountaineers.