Jay Johnson previews CWS Final vs. Florida

It’s time to reset for Jay Johnson and the Tigers as they prepare for the College World Series Final against Florida just over 12 hours after a walk-off win over Wake Forest on Thursday night. The three-game series begins on Saturday night in Omaha and crown a champion.

On Friday morning, LSU met with the media to discuss the appearance in the final series. Here’s what head coach Jay Johnson had to say.

Opening statement

COACH JOHNSON: Obviously excited to be here as a college baseball coach. This is where you want to be this time of year. Very proud of the team, especially coming through the losers’ bracket after a tough loss Monday night to, again, one of the best teams that I’ve seen in recently times, in Wake Forest, particularly on the pitching side of things.

Really good week that we put together to get back to this point. And now it’s about moving forward. Wanted the players to feel good about what they accomplished last night. And something we’ve talked about all year is mastering moving forward, moving on to the next step, whether that’s through success or adversity.

They’ve shown a lot of maturity in doing that throughout the year, and I expect us to do that moving into tomorrow night.

Q. How much has your experience of just being here at this level the College World Series final, the national championship on the line, how much has that helped you prepare this team?

COACH JOHNSON: 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. 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.

Q. Looking at the talent across this matchup alone and the matchup we saw last night, multiple first-, second-round draft round picks, what do you think has enabled college baseball to feature this kind of talent over the years?

COACH JOHNSON: I think the development platforms, the places like LSU have, that can feed the players’ dream of becoming a Major League player. When you look at nutrition, strength and conditioning, mental coaches — some of the best coaches in baseball; not college baseball, in baseball — are a part of these programs that have been playing in the College World Series.

So it’s a real opportunity for the players to accelerate achieving their dream of becoming a Major League player some day and get to play in an environment like this, which is second to none. You won’t experience anything like this unless you’re one of the very few that get to play in a Major League World Series.

Q. Can you speak to what a great player and star Tre’ Morgan is, the electricity he brings offensively, defensively? All the kids are screaming his name for autographs whenever he walks in here. What is it like to observe all that?

COACH JOHNSON: If I gave you a full answer we might be here all day. I think as I’ve said before, throughout the year and rightfully so, he’s one of the best competitors that I’ve ever coached. And just his will to win, his will to succeed, come through for our team when we need him the most is really next level.

And I think it starts there. Great parents. Was raised incredibly well. I think the maturation process, if you will, that I’ve seen is that he’s become a leader on our team. And getting to spend these two years with him, it’s been really fun to see that evolution and hear him speak here in Omaha about his teammates and what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it.

And in terms of the play, nobody embodies that better than Tre’. And on top of that, he’s a phenomenal baseball player. Very rarely do you put that competitive character with the hand-eye coordination, the two-strike-hitting ability, defensive versatility and all those things.

Shortly after we’re done a professional team is going to be very happy to have Tre’ Morgan.

Q. Coach O’Sullivan was talking about how different it is to set up a team for SEC schedule and when you get out here it’s a little bit different how you manufacture runs and stuff. Can you talk about that element in terms of how maybe you’ve had to shift the way you play offense in this tournament?

COACH JOHNSON: Yeah, I think I have a good perspective about that coming from the West and the Pac-12. It’s bigger fields. It’s a different style of play. Most of the parks in the SEC are launching pads, for lack of a better word. This is not here.

And when we talk about building an offense, early on, very early on in the fall we want to be able to win any type of game — pitchers’ duel like last night, one-run game, slugfest, wind blowing out, small park, big field, doesn’t matter.

And to have a skill set to be able to do that — and there’s some hallmarks in that skill set that travel, if you will, without sounding too football coach-ish, that things that we’ve done all year long have helped us score some runs here.

But there’s a different nature to it, especially in the games that we’ve played with the wind blowing straight in, the size of the field, the quality of the pitching. And, again, I think it’s unique and probably appropriate that our last three opponents, in my opinion, on this year’s schedule, are three of the best pitching staffs in college baseball.

Q. Without tipping your hand too much or giving away state secrets, what’s in the notebook? What have you discovered from ’16, what did you learn from your side of the bracket this time that you feel like put you in a position to be successful?

COACH JOHNSON: I think having a plan for everything just coming into the tournament. And whether you win game one, lose game one, win the first two, lose one of the first two, and you can’t get too far down the road.

And that’s probably the thing that helped us the most, I would say, over the last few days. I think if you lose your plan, you know, this is over quickly. And I think that’s probably the thing I’m the most proud of the last couple days.

I thought we were not on it in the first inning of Wednesday’s game. And we brought it up to the team. Like, we had had this conversation a month ago to, like, we have to stay right here, right now and in character.

And when you have old players that have had success that have a good blueprint in their eyes of how to be successful and have had success with it, you can kind of get them back on track. And then they’re good enough to go execute it. That’s the most important part of it.

And then staying right there right now. And last night was special. That was a special game for all of the country to watch. And it was a big win for our program. And I wanted our players to feel that because if you don’t you lose sight of why you’re doing this.

And there becomes an expiration date on that and then master the art of moving forward. And when you’re going to play seven or eight games here like we are, you have to be able to do that.

Q. Just talk about the two different dynamics — LSU, perhaps the team with the momentum heading into the final, compared to Florida, the team that’s probably a little more well-rested.

COACH JOHNSON: I say this all the time. In baseball it’s very unique. It’s different than basketball and football. I think talent wins out in basketball and football more often. In baseball, it’s not always the team with the best players, it’s the team that plays the best that day.

And as hard as it may seem to get anybody’s head around, it’s about tomorrow. Tomorrow’s the only thing that matters tomorrow. And there’s advantages to both. Maybe you talk about rhythm. You talk about routine. You talk about confidence.

Both teams will play with a ton of confidence as they should with the rosters. And I think it’s awesome. When you look at selection day, and I’m a very stay-in-the-moment type guy, my Baton Rouge media friends will tell you.

But you look at the bracket and you look on the other side, it’s like, yeah, this is not a surprise to me who we’re playing.

Q. Back in February, you and I talked about the challenge of transitioning this new age of transfers coming in. Doesn’t seem to have been a problem. Certainly wasn’t last night. What’s the secret sauce for taking guys from other programs and plugging them in with guys that have been here since they got out of high school?

COACH JOHNSON: It’s a good question. And it’s fit. We’re not for everybody. You know what I mean? Florida is probably not for everybody either.

I think building team. You have to be really intentional about building team. And we have a great freshmen class as well. There’s guys that haven’t seen a lot of time here that are the future stars of our program.

And I think about Brady Neal who has been hurt; Paxton Kling; Jared Jones. They’ve all contributed to this team’s success and will be the headliners of next year’s group.

We got here in large part, in large part because of Gavin Guidry and Griffin Herring. I had a meeting with those guys in January and February, like,you’re going to have to spearhead this thing going forward.

The reality of it when you look at the SEC West and SEC East, you cannot win without age, experience and all those types of things. I mean, I think I know who the three players were who up here for Florida. Those are grown men.

It’s not a little boy’s league. And you have to have some age and experience underneath you.

Q. Having to play the four games in four days, obviously the pitching was really, obviously worked pretty hard. Curious about how you welcome is a day off, first of all, and how you feel about your pitching setting up, given the number of arms you had to use to get through this?

COACH JOHNSON: Yeah, I’m way okay with having a day off today. That’s going to work out well for us.

I have faith in a lot of the guys. We have 12 on the roster, on the active roster for this thing. And they’ve all pitched in games that we’ve won this year and games that we’ve had success.

And I think there’s a pathway for them if they execute to be successful. And it really doesn’t matter what I think or feel about it; we are where we are. We earned our way here the way that we did. And so now we have to go with how we’re set up.

Q. Is Hayden Travinski available to play for the rest of this series? And the second question is just the scouting report on Wyatt Langford.

COACH JOHNSON: Yeah, in terms of Hayden, he was nursing a small injury, and it became a little bit bigger injury earlier in the tournament. Massive, massive gratitude for him giving it a go on Monday. He did the best he could with where he was at. And this time of year, that’s the way it has to be.

He was not available to play on Tuesday. Might have been available to pinch-hit on Wednesday. We had some progress yesterday, but we’ve got a little ways to go to know where we’re going to stand with what he will be or won’t be available for going into the weekend.

Wyatt Langford, great player. I mean, I don’t know how much else to say. Somebody’s going to pay him a lot of money, as they should. And I think, like Dylan, like Paul and a couple of other guys on their roster, it will be a short arc in terms of minor league baseball to the big leagues. He’s a very well-built player.