Jay Johnson shares what his experience does for LSU in CWS Final

After an exciting walk-off victory against Wake Forest on Thursday night, the LSU Tigers are on their way to the College World Series Final to face off against SEC foe, the Florida Gators.

Head coach Jay Johnson is familiar with coaching in the final series of the tournament from his time at Arizona. In 2016, while leading the Arizona Wildcats baseball program, the head man led his team on a run to the MCWS finale. And he believes that his experience from back then will pay dividends for LSU against Florida.

“I think there’s benefit to it. It’s just like with the players, something I tell them all the time the best coach they’ll ever have in their life is playing time,” said Johnson. “When you get here and get to experience playing eight games in one World Series back in 2016, that definitely helps.

“You know what to expect. You know where the pitfalls are, you know things that I try to take a notebook with me everywhere when I’m doing everything, and being in Omaha you certainly want to do that. And it’s been helpful. Reflected a little bit on that last night. And more so of how do you transition from the bracket to the championship series. And we had a good plan for that coming in. And excited to get into that phase of it now.”

In 2016, things did not end the way that Johnson would have liked as his Wildcats fell to the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers in the final game of their three-game series 4-3. But this time around, Johnson expects a much different outcome, as he now knows what to expect when coaching any championship series.

Jay Johnson says championship has always been the goal

In the postgame following the second win over Wake Forest, Johnson was also asked about his emotions on making the championship series.

“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.

On3’s Alex Weber contributed to this article