Thatcher Hurd used Paul Skenes' glove for 'good mojo' in LSU win over South Carolina in SEC Tournament

LSU advanced in the SEC Baseball Tournament with a second round victory over South Carolina, beating the Gamecocks 10-3, thanks in part to Thatcher Hurd.

The Tigers hit well and used the arm of their starting pitcher Hurd, who went 5.1 innings, had four strikeouts and gave up just four hits and three earned runs. Head coach Jay Johnson praised his pitcher and Hurd even used some good luck mojo.

He revealed he used ace Paul Skenes’ glove.

“Yeah I was,” Hurd said on the SEC Network broadcast. “I’ve been using that past couple outings, broke mine the other week and so I’m just (gonna) keep running with it. It’s got good mojo.”

To get prepared for the early start, Hurd and the rest of the Tigers had to get it going a little bit earlier for the second round.

“Yeah, I mean, our strength coach and all our coaches did a great job,” Hurd said. “They got us up early yesterday to get us in the flow of early start. So you know, it felt easy waking up this morning. And, you know, I’ll wake up to pitch any day. So I was excited to go.”

In the fifth inning, LSU poured it on with four runs. The Tigers took a 6-1 lead over the Gamecocks and cruised from there.

That gave Hurd enough of a cushion to use him in the sixth inning, despite getting in a little trouble where South Carolina added two more runs.

“Yeah, it was awesome and really, that’s like seven or eight out of nine appearances that have been really really good,” Johnson said of Hurd’s performance. “He’s a winner and has great stuff. He’ll pitch in the Major League someday and guys develop at different times. And he’s really developed a lot this year and pitching with a lot of confidence and poise and, and when he’s on his game, we’re gonna win and that was today.”

Johnson was confident in Hurd and despite having the lead cut 6-3 in the sixth inning, LSU tacked on two more runs.“Yeah, we have a great offense, and we’ve played great baseball all year on that side of the ball,” Johnson said. “We can do it a lot of different ways. But I thought there were a lot of professional at-bats today. We walked, we moved the ball forward with runners in scoring position, got a big home run by Brayden Jobert. So really put the whole deal together in a big way against a really good team today.”