"This is who we are now." LSU continues to find ways to win

The stress of postseason baseball overwhelmed LSU fans on Friday afternoon in game one of the Chapel Hill regional in North Carolina. Through six innings it seemed like LSU had lost its magic from the past month and a half as Wofford took a 3-1 lead entering the seventh.

Then, the Tigers’ patent comeback run happened. Steven Milam, Michael Braswell, and Jared Jones homered in the next two innings to tie the game, before Milam hit a walk-off solo home run to steal the postseason win over the Terriers 4-3.

It was another example of the resilience LSU had built up over the course of the season. Sure, there are new faces from last year’s title run, but at this point, there’s nothing that surprises this team.

“First off, I want to give credit to Little, he pitched exceptionally well [for Wofford]. That was the story for the beginning of the game.” Johnson said. “A lot of guys are going through a lot of firsts and this is their first NCAA Tournament game and they want to do well, but we have to work through some of that. [Gage] set a good tone in the top of the first inning, then we didn’t help him in the bottom of the first inning and that’s part of the complimentary baseball –  we have to play better.

“Relative to the toughness aspect, that’s just who we are now. We got cut. We got blistered. We got punched in the gut 50 times in the first five weeks of SEC play, but we got out of the hospital and this is who we are now.” 

The pitching was the first significant step forward toward contending, specifically with Gage jump and Luke Holman as the two go-to starters. As their level rose, so did the team’s confidence. 

Jump stepped on the mound on Friday and was perfect in the top of the first, needing just six pitches to get through the top of the order. In the second, Wofford began tagging him, putting two runs on the board, but after that, it was mostly a clean outing from one of the Tigers’ best arms.

“They’re a good offense,” Jump said. “In the first inning I blew it past them with fastballs, then in the next inning I spun some good breakers and they just took them. They battled and were tough to put away, then after that it was mixing and matching. Commanding the fastball helped a lot, then later in the game, but then I just threw a bad fastball and he hit it.”

Regardless of the three runs, Jump’s ability to keep Wofford’s dangerous offense at bay kept the Tigers in it. 

LSU’s bats have been much better over the past 25 games. In fact, the Tigers have scored six or more runs in 15 of those 25 contests, but today was not one of those times, so Jump’s outing once again showed this team’s resilience.

“It was massive,” Milam said of Jump’s outing. “All season, he has kept us in every single game and that gets overlooked sometimes, but now we’re on a bigger stage now and everyone sees it and he’s going to continue to deliver and he’s a major factor why we won that game.”

Game after game, it seems there’s a different storyline for LSU. Sometimes the pitching holds opposing bats to one or two runs. Sometimes the offense crosses the plate 10+ times. On Friday, both played their part to get a huge NCAA Tournament win. Regardless of the outcome, LSU has found its identity and its confidence.

At this point, the Tigers might lose, but it won’t be due to a lack of mental fortitude.

These dudes are tough.

“When you go through what we went through and played the teams we played, there is nothing we have not seen,” Johnson said. “You draw confidence from that and we’ve had enough success to believe in ourselves. They just needed to slow down, stay in our plan, and we were going to be OK. I believed it and they showed you who they were.”