Q&A: Jay Johnson looks to "stay in the fight" entering final series

Head coach Jay Johnson met with the media ahead of LSU’s season-defining series against Ole Miss at home this weekend. The series begins on Thursday night and runs through Saturday with the SEC Tournament beginning next week.

Johnson talked about his approach for this series, the surprises of the year, the challenges, and more. Here are the top quotes from his press conference.

On the approach for the weekend…

“Happy to be at home and I think we’ve played well over the last 15 games. There’s a lot at stake, but playing important baseball games in the last week of the season is the expectation here. In spite of the difficulty, these games matter. I’m looking forward to our best effort at home, playing a team that’s in a very similar situation. I’m looking forward to pitching well, defending well, and taking good at-bats. I can validate that this is very important to our players. We didn’t win, but the effort last weekend reflected that.”

On closing out this regular season…

“They’ve continued to give good effort. We lost some tough ones. Friday was difficult, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. In spite of all that, we still have a chance because we didn’t lose much out of league. I was looking at the field and we have 13 wins against teams projected to be in the field, the third most non-conference wins, won a premier tournament, and we’ve played a good schedule. Do I want to be 10-17 in the SEC? No, but we still have a chance. We’ll prepare, play with great focus, energy, and effort, and hopefully put ourselves in the best position to have a chance.”

What has surprised you about this year?

“I pride myself on winning close games and we have some that we just haven’t finished out. Having a lot of those stacked up like that, there’s a psychological warfare going on in the players mind to get past that and I think we have gotten past that. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the mindset last weekend, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind. The number of difficult losses where you’re a pitch away from winning the Florida, Alabama, and Vanderbilt series. I’ve never had all of those at one time before.”

On the pattern of champions struggling the next season…

“Now having a full season under our belt as the champs, it’s the only sport and only league where it would rear its head like that. The nature of baseball is different and baseball in the SEC is different. It’s the most complete conference in any sport in the country in terms of all the best players are here right now, all the programs are pouring a lot of resources into baseball, so it’s a unique challenge. On the front end, I would say to win a national championship you have to have MLB players, then you have to have old players who know what they’re doing, so then you’re going to lose a lot of those guys. We set an SEC record for number of players drafted, so you’re playing with an entirely new team. It would be a super exception if a team won the title in baseball with freshmen and sophomores.

I have no problem with the effort level with our team. Complacency has not been a part of our struggles. The SEC and the portal would be what I say is the story. We started three freshmen against the No. 1 team in the country a few weeks ago and it’s really hard to do that because of the portal and the MLB Draft going from 40 rounds to 20 rounds. I watch games and they look like 35 year olds. It’s a byproduct of the transfer portal and the MLB Draft is what I would say.”

On staying alive…

“We need to go all-in to win tomorrow because the more we win the longer we stay in the fight. That’s what it’s about right now. That’s what makes Friday even more tough to swallow. Just that one flips our way and we’re in a better situation. Relative to the weekend, we had a good practice, the energy level is there. The goals were very lofty coming into the season, but it’s not the time to assess what we could have done better earlier, but I feel good about where they’re at.”

Has this season affected recruiting?

“I don’t think so. Until somebody wins the national championship, we’re still the reigning champs. We still have 12,000 people show up to our games, Paul was my 29th Major League player. This is not where we want to be, but we’ve won 33 games. We’re one of the 15 best teams in college baseball, we’ve just played all the other ones and if you’re outside the league you don’t have that same experience. If it did, I wouldn’t let it be an excuse. Our job is to recruit, develop, and win at the level we want to.”