Jordan Thompson explains how a team meeting after the SEC Tournament changed the trajectory of LSU's season

LSU Baseball is playing about as well as anyone so far in the college baseball tournament — besides maybe Wake Forest, who has wiped the floor with every team they’ve faced thus far. After cruising past Kentucky with relative ease in the Super Regional round, the Tigers are officially en route to Omaha for a shot at the title. However, this wasn’t a team that was dominant from start to finish. They have flaws, plenty of them, but have rallied past their faults to hit a groove here late in the year.

“Yeah, I think we all could agree on, as a team, that we probably weren’t playing to the standard that we were playing at the beginning of the season,” LSU infielder Jordan Thompson admitted at a pre-CWS press conference. “And we really just needed to get back to who we were as uh as a team and, you know, take more pride in in every single at bat, every single pitch and, you know, just trying to get the job done.”

LSU has played stellar ball for much of the back half of the year but is peaking in the tournament, which Thompson credits to the bond the players have and their will to keep this season going.

“And, you know, knowing that these are the last times that this group will ever be together and we just want to cherish every moment,” said Thompson. “We don’t want to lose, you know. We don’t want to stop playing with each other, so we’re gonna do whatever it takes on every single pitch to continue playing.”

In order to jolt them into this stretch of terrific play, Thompson revealed that a team meeting was needed midway through the year to hold everybody accountable and get back to playing real Tiger baseball.

“But they kind of led the meeting. Coach had us all together at first and then after that it broke apart. We had position players hold a meeting where everyone kind of just chomped in and, you know, said their thoughts on what was going on and what we were doing before that made us so special, and maybe what we weren’t doing at the time. We kind of just came to a point where it’s like…alright, you know, this is all or nothing right now. And, you know, we’re not looking back, so we kind of just ran with that and just trying to, you know, fight every single day to keep playing together.”

After hitting that sort of inflection point, LSU only rallied together to put on their best performances of the year in the games that matter most. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why LSU is making a trip to the midwest’s corn paradise this weekend.