What Jay Johnson said after LSU loss to Wake Forest

LSU Baseball coach Jay Johnson met with the media Monday night after the loss to Wake Forest. Here’s what he said in his postgame press conference at the College World Series.

COACH JOHNSON: Great college baseball game. Hats off to the pitching on both sides. They got a clutch hit there at the end and we did not. We’ll get ready to go tomorrow.

Q. I was sort of curious, were you managing this game in part thinking of the possibility of maybe there being extra games and having to save a couple arms for later in the tournament at all? Or is that not part of your thinking at all?

COACH JOHNSON: We were trying to win tonight with the best two guys we had available. And they both pitched fantastic.

Q. For the long version, what did you want the guys to hear from you there in the dugout before you all dispersed onto the bus?

COACH JOHNSON: I think it would be very easy to crawl in the hole with disappointment. That’s a great college baseball game that we came up on the short end of the stick. It really came down to Wilken hit a ball up the middle with no outs and got the guy in from third. And then he made a heck of a play on that play.

Then they got an RBI hit there in the eighth and we didn’t when we had our one chance right there.

So that could be deflating. But I shared with them two things. Number one, I’ve had a team in this position before. Lost a 1-0 heartbreaker to Oklahoma State and then won three consecutive games to play for a national championship.

Then the very next year this program did the same thing. And they beat probably one of the best teams in modern college baseball history twice to get that opportunity.

And I have all the faith in the world in our team that we can do that. So let’s stick to what we do. And if we do that well, then we’ll be in a good spot.

Q. Tonight around 13 strikeouts offensively. What’s it going to take for you guys to just bounce back in the box tomorrow and hope to have a good offensive production against Tennessee’s pitching staff?

A. The teams that are here, particularly the two that we’ve played, they’re the two premier pitching staffs in college baseball. And Josh Hartle is really good, really good.

And preparing for this game we knew he presented a challenge. I thought our guys battled them pretty good. I thought they did. He’s really hard to square up. He executed pitches down in the zone both sides of the plate, as Tre’ mentioned. And we put some pressure on him.

It wasn’t a great night to hit with the wind blowing in and a good pitcher. And we benefited from that early in the game, too, with Ty.

But I have zero concerns about these guys preparing well, coming in and competing and executing our plan. We’ll have to do it against Drew Beam, who is one of the best pitchers in the country.

So it will be a really good challenge, and we’re going to have to be ready for it.

Q. What were you seeing from these Wake Forest pitchers that were kind of throwing off the hitting tonight?

COACH JOHNSON: With Hartle, it’s four pitches for strikes. And Bowen has a great breaking ball. Obviously came in, struck out the first two batters he faced. Massey has a great arm.

Made a great pitch to Cade. You have to send the runner there so we stay out of the double play. And it was a heck of a play by Wilken. If it skips or if he throws it and it bounces off Tre’ we’re ahead 3-2 and we probably have runners on second and two.

Again, in championship environments, as we said in our game on Saturday, your dudes have to be dudes. And he was a dude tonight.

Good bullpen. Those guys are really tough. And there’s a reason why they have only lost 10 games all year with the starting pitching they have and the bullpen they have.

Q. Guess it was a red situation all the way. What did you see, did Josh tell you anything afterwards?

COACH JOHNSON: No, it’s a ground ball. We were going because if he doesn’t go then we’re going to hit into a double play and it makes it really difficult. Now you have a man on third standing there with two outs. Now you need a base hit.

It’s very simple baseball, actually. And, again, I mean I don’t know that Cade Beloso has hit a ground ball to third base the entire season. So you have you to tip your hat to Massey for executing the 2-0 pitch that he did, and got him to swing through, and then the 2-1 pitch.

Q. What’s the pitching plan for tomorrow and then going forward knowing you have three in a row?

COACH JOHNSON: Yeah, we have nine guys available to pitch tomorrow. And we’ll choose one of them. And he’ll get guys out for as long as he can. And then we’ll go to the next guy and we’ll go to the next guy and we’ll go to the next guy until we figure out how to get 27 outs against a really good team.