LSU baseball would start out playing one of its most solid all-around baseball games on Friday night, but that quickly crumbled in the fifth inning, leading to a 12-4 loss to Texas A&M.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Tigers\u2019 start was outstanding. Clean defense, superb pitching and even outs on offense were loud outs. But in the fifth inning, it all came crashing down.<\/p>\n
The starting pitcher donning purple and gold was exceptional on the mound to begin the game. Casan Evans threw five innings and only allowed seven hits and three walks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for the Tigers, two of those walks would eventually come around to score and kickstart the Aggie offense.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Texas A&M is] a good offensive team,\u201d LSU head coach Jay Johnson said after the game. \u201cTwo-out hitting is going to make the difference in the game. We had a couple chances, but popped [the ball] up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going into the weekend, Johnson said his team would have to play lockdown baseball to try to overcome this offense. He mentioned after the midweek win over Northwestern that the quality of baseball had to be there, and it would be the focus of practice for the remainder of the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to get better, and I don\u2019t know any way to do it,\u201d Johnson said on Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m going to really hone in on what I know works and [that] doesn\u2019t guarantee anything. [We\u2019re] playing a juggernaut offense this weekend, and a team playing with a lot of confidence. We\u2019re not winning unless we play good, so we need to play good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tigers did just that. The plan was executed well, and the Texas A&M offense was mostly held until the fifth inning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In that inning alone, the Aggies more than doubled their runs scored in the game with a leadoff walk and two singles. Then the wheels fell off as Texas A&M would score six total runs in the next two innings.<\/p>\n
From here, the game completely shifted.<\/p>\n
The Tigers would be nearly silenced for the remainder of the game, only scratching across six hits and scoring three runs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting hot at the right time is the most pivotal part of a baseball season, and so far, LSU has shown the potential of creating a hot streak late.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, time is running out, and after this loss, the team has to go 7-7 during the last 14 games of the season to make the NCAA tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a process of winning here that we have not been connected to as a team,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt bothers me, and so I\u2019m just going to coach as hard as I can on baseball-specific stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The game was a story for the ages, but nonetheless, LSU will have to shift focus to the next.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Tigers will try to even the series on Saturday. First pitch will be at 7 p.m. at Alex Box Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LSU baseball would start out playing one of its most solid all-around baseball games on Friday night, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-678240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116424871974910528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}