What Jay Johnson said after beating Oregon State, winning regional

Here’s what Jay Johnson said after the win over Oregon State as his LSU team advances to the super regionals.

Opening statement

COACH JOHNSON: Really proud of the team. I think this was a great week. The preparation by the players and the staff was elite. And then the execution on the field by the players on all sides of the ball was outstanding. Great job by our pitching staff for the three games. Really proud of the guys today the way they executed what we laid out for them. Defensively, I thought we had a great weekend. One error today. But I think that was it.

And then offensively, really, really, really strong performance in three different kind of ways. But I think it shows the capability of this team. And really proud of them. And we’re going to get reset, put together another great week, and get prepared for the coming weekend.

Q. Jay, this weekend in every phase of the game, was it one of your more complete weekends hitting, starting pitching, relief pitching, fielding, was it one of the more complete weekends you’ve had this year?

COACH JOHNSON: Yeah, I think it was very complete baseball. I think it was complementary baseball. I remember the first game in the season, you know, Paul went out and threw a shutout. We played error-less defense and hit a few homers and moved the ball with runners in scoring position and talked about that being a good model. And sometimes we’ve done two of the three well. And usually when we’ve done two of the three well we win because we have really good players that have a good plan.

But I feel good about how we executed and played complementary baseball this weekend.

Q. Obviously the news just broke about Wes Johnson. Does he plan on staying for the rest of the season?

COACH JOHNSON: Yeah, he’s locked in. This has been done for about five days. I mean, I think the preparation and the execution of the pitching staff this weekend speaks for itself. And it’s just a new time in college athletics. So I would just — we were having a meeting tomorrow morning, I was going to tell him tomorrow morning. But obviously you don’t get to that point. But I love him like a brother. I can’t imagine only spending 11 months with somebody and connecting the way that we have.

And we’re going to get a great pitching coach. I’m not even worried about that or dialing any of that stuff in. I just love working with him. And he’s made a big impact on our guys, and it’s been great. But it is what it is. And I don’t have any reason to worry about how we’re going to roll going forward.

Q. Obviously it feels good to be able to win your Regional, but how much are you emphasizing to your guys like, yes, we’re going to celebrate today but we have bigger things that we’re looking forward to, especially making it to Omaha?

COACH JOHNSON: I think the best thing that happened was, as I said earlier in my opening statement, the preparation for this weekend was elite. So they have a blueprint.

So I want them to enjoy this. I think if you don’t for a minute you kind of forget about why are you actually doing this. And then they’ll have a very structured plan starting with our meeting later tomorrow morning of how we’re going to attack next weekend.

And I have no concern whatsoever of them being ready to play next weekend.

Q. You obviously had broke this down backwards and forwards in terms of your approach and how you were going to pitch it. I just wanted your thoughts now after that you’ve won the three games to start Skenes first and then Thatcher to team up with Ty, and the job your guys did today along with those rain delays that kind of challenged you there.

COACH JOHNSON: This is always one of my favorite weeks of the year. And I love the preparation part of it. Once we got the bracket, we started looking at each team and maybe where the potential trouble spots, problems might arise.

It’s postseason baseball. I think going with Paul, I’m guessing, is the nature of the question, I thought it would help the team settle into the postseason.

And the weather thing, that was the real deal. And I have some underground sources, that I used all of them. And I’m not going to sit here tell you that was all of the decision but that was certainly part of the decision.

I remember in 2016, my team won a Regional at Louisiana-Lafayette and then we bussed straight to Mississippi State for Super Regional. That was on Tuesday. And LSU’s Regional was still being played on Tuesday. So knowing that there was some weather, the potential that you could possibly pitch twice if that was needed, if the pitch count was low in one of those situations.

And I don’t think anybody gives Ty Floyd enough credit. The guy’s undefeated. That means he’s not lost a game. I’m not a genius, but I think it’s good when you can pitch guys that have not lost a game.

Q. Riley Cooper has been pitching for you for a while now. If you could go back to his freshman year, which I know he pitched in a lot of high-leverage situations for you at Arizona, what did you identify with him that made you trust him so quickly, and how has he grown?

COACH JOHNSON: Trust is the keyword. First off, go back and look at his high school statistics he was 31-1. High school baseball in Fresno, California is really good. He was a winner. That was the first thing. We recruited him at Arizona because he was a winner.

And then he pitched in some big spots as a freshman. And I’ll never forget this. Opening game, so part of back to the pitching strategy, in 2021 as a freshman, we pitched our ace, Chase Silseth, who is already in the Major Leagues. He gave up like four fast.

We were down 4-0 in game one of the home Regional as a host, national seed. They were a little bit left-handed. So we rolled him out there and allowed our team to come back. It was a really solid performance.

The very next weekend, against Ole Miss, game one of the Super Regional, Major League pitcher gives up three in the first inning. We come back and kind of tie it up and then we go right to him again. And he shuts Ole Miss down and helps us get to Omaha.

Then goes to Omaha, and we’re playing in front of 26,000 people against Vanderbilt and you’re rolling him out there. And the heartbeat is slow and he just executes. He pitched in two games in the NCAA Tournament last year.

There’s never been a question about whether he can do it or not. And I mean he’s had some of the most important pitching performances of the two years that we’ve been here. He’s just a winner.

And sometimes it’s not about velocity of the fastball. It’s not about the metrics. It’s about who is a winner. And Riley Cooper is a winner, and we’re a winning time right now. That’s why he was chosen today and the fact that we thought specifically, after watching the game last night, that he would match up well with Oregon State.

Q. Just more as a big picture, you got what probably perfect scenario out of your pitching staff, I guess. Just right guys, right time. Do you feel it’s rounding into what you wanted it to be?

COACH JOHNSON: Yes and no, because if it was perfect, Chase Shores, Garrett Edwards, Grant Taylor, Jaden Noot would be out there. These guys are Major Leaguers. I think it speaks to how quality of a team that we have, that we’ve lost all of those guys and we’re sitting here 46-15 and playing home baseball with two wins to get to Omaha.

And again, like this game is not designed like football and basketball. And there’s going to be some failure in it. And I’m just proud of them for kind of withstanding some of that.

And the response. And we needed to do two things well. When we brought relievers into the game, they needed to be ready to get the first guy out because we’re bringing them in at a certain time to face a certain hitter. And we’ve started to do that really, really well. Every guy did that today.

Then when something goes wrong to reset for the next pitch. And mentally I would give pitchers a lot higher marks over the past couple of weeks, Georgia, SEC Tournament, and this weekend, prior to what we were doing the two weekends before that.

And then you can look before that and there were some pretty good runs of pitching there, at Ole Miss and Tennessee here. And you start moving forward, there were some other guys coming into the end of the game that we’ll be excited to have back some day.

Q. You say it’s never about Omaha, it’s one game at a time, one day at a time. Is that still the mindset leading into Super Regionals?

COACH JOHNSON: Yes, we talked about a couple of things going into the postseason. Number one is it’s a John Wooden thing of it’s amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit. And these guys are a team. And they’re all about the togetherness part of it. They’ve done a wonderful job with that.

So that’s one thing. And then the other thing is just legitimately, no matter where we’re at, that is where we were at. We’re not worried about the next game. We’re not worried about the next inning, the next pitch, just being incredibly present. And I think when you look at the complementary baseball that was played from the mound, from the field, offensively, executing in a lot of ways, they did that this weekend. And so again my hope is that encourages them to stay locked into that frame of mind. And if they do that, then we play really good baseball.

If they do that, I can legitimately surrender the result because I know the mindset is right.

Q. Last year in Hattiesburg you were bitterly disappointed when you guys lost because a couple at-bats — maybe you’re hosting a Super Regional last year — from that point now to get to host the Super Regional I know that’s not the ultimate goal, but how much fuel did that add to the fire for this season?

COACH JOHNSON: I don’t need any more motivation. This is my entire life. And I mean, there’s losses I think about every day. That loss of the national championship game with tying run on third and winning run on second. I’m over it. I’m at peace with it. But I think about it every single day to this day. That one hurt. Not for the — we didn’t do this or didn’t do that. I really wanted those guys to go to Omaha.

You know what I mean? That’s a group of guys that had not been there other than the guys we brought. So that’s the part for me. It’s like I want this for them. And so we don’t need any more motivation, though. We could do some things like Coach Bertman has done and we’ll still be plenty motivated around here, I promise.

Q. There’s a lot of teams that were highly ranked all year that were hosting this weekend that are no longer playing moving forward. I just wanted to get your take on how difficult it is to actually win at this time of year.

COACH JOHNSON: I’ll be honest, I haven’t scoreboard watched a whole lot because we’ve been really locked in on what we’re doing here. I have no idea of anything that happened today. It’s hard. I mean, again, what coach did here and the flags and doing it that frequently, that should really be appreciated because it’s not that easy.

And I tell them this all the time. I’m very thankful for what he did here because it’s made LSU LSU and the best place to coach in the country, but what he did is he made all the teams in the Southeastern Conference better too which makes my job a lot harder.

But it’s hard to win, it’s hard to win one college baseball game. And so all elements of the program have to function at a high level, recruiting, development, coaching staff. The engagement of the players and what’s going on. And even when you do all those things right, it doesn’t guarantee success. But if you don’t have all of that you don’t have a chance to win on this stage.