OMAHA, Neb – Game-ending plays of championship baseball teams are usually suitable for framing moments.
For LSU, there’s none more iconic than Warren Morris’ stunning walk-off homer to beat Miami and capture the 1996 College World Series.
Also fairly memorable was Ryan Theriot sliding across home plate with the game-winning run on Brad Cresse’s walk-off RBI single over Stanford in 2000 to give legendary Tigers’ head coach Skip Bertman his fifth and final CWS title.
A ground ball and a fly out ended LSU’s first two national championship wins in 1991 and 1993, both over Wichita State. Tigers’ pitchers waiting for the celebratory mound dogpile after striking out batters secured the 1997, 2009, and 2023 championships over Alabama, Texas, and Florida.
But here on Sunday afternoon, for the first time, LSU announced its eighth national title acquisition with a double play turned by second baseman Daniel Dickinson and shortstop Steven Milam to secure a 5-3 win and a CWS finals series sweep of Coastal Carolina.
The twin-killing was so smooth – Dickinson gobbling up a grounder and flipping it to Milan, who caught the ball as he touched second base for the second out and firing it in one motion to junior first baseman Jared Jones for the third and final out of the season – it confirmed what the 2025 national champion Tigers were all about.
They made the fundamental look fundamental and the difficult appear easy.
“I could coach this team forever,” said LSU’s Jay Johnson after becoming the first Division 1 head coach to win two national titles in his first four seasons at a school.
And the LSU faithful around the world, especially those who flocked here like it’s their summer vacation home and in their last two CWS visits in 2023 and this year downed 121,278 $5 jello shots at their favorite Omaha watering hole Rocco’s (that’s $606,390 worth of celebratory alcohol infusion) – wouldn’t mind watching this season’s Tigers on a repeated video loop.
It’s because LSU played smart, rarely fielding or engaging in prolonged streaks of poor base-running or plate discipline, which led to poor at-bats.
It was always focused, always concentrating on the task at hand.
It had no problem, like sophomore Milam, who is now batting .379 with 17 RBI in 16 NCAA tournament games in his first two seasons, saying how much they embraced the big moments and then executed under pressure.
It improved throughout the season, collectively and individually, even when it suffered its only SEC series sweep of the
season at Auburn, the team swept in a home Super Regional by Coastal Carolina.
It was the only time that the 53-15 national champs lost three consecutive games.
They believed in themselves, embraced Johnson’s “one for all and all for one” team philosophy, and had faith in every one of his well-researched, thoroughly studied directives.
For instance, pitchers Anthony Eyanson and Chase Shores looked like cruise-control cyborgs in Sunday’s win, combining for 13 strikeouts and one walk.
How? Just follow the man with the plan.
“He (Johnson) outlines everything before the game and makes our job a lot easier because he says what’s going to happen before the game, and we’ve just got to go out there and execute,” Shores said.
Eyanson described Johnson’s pregame speeches as it feels “like a movie when he talks about the lineup, talking about everybody’s role, how they can contribute to scoring runs on the offensive side.”
If you could freeze frame Sunday’s final out, you could see examples of Johnson’s coaching magic and unparalleled recruiting touch from foul line to foul line all over Charles Schwab Field.
There was sophomore redshirt Shores, who missed all of last year recovering from Tommy John surgery, with his arms aloft, starting the celebration after getting two saves in seven innings spread over four CWS games.
“I (mentally) replay all the rehab work I did,” Shores said. “But to come out the other side and play in the College World Series is truly special.”
The first to hug Shores was indestructible senior catcher Luis Hernandez, an Indiana State transfer who caught 95 percent of Tigers’ pitches in 11 NCAA tourney games (all 662 in the CWS). He also delivered the game-tying two-run RBI double and then scored the game-winning run in the 6-5 victory over Arkansas to move the Tigers to the finals.
“Thank you to Jay Johnson,” Hernandez said. “We worked in the fall really hard to accomplish this, and my ability to be great in catching.”
Jones, who bypassed last summer’s MLB Draft to return for this year and bat .322 with 22 homers, paused momentarily after securing Curiel’s throw before running to join the celebration.
“It’s been an unbelievable ride for us the last nine or 10 months that we’ve put in together as a team,” Jones said. “From day one, our fundamental was to go out there and compete to have a lot of fun doing it.”
Third baseman Michael Braswell III, overcome by emotion, collapsed face-first on the ground where he stood as the double play was completed.
The senior transferred from South Carolina a year ago, started at shortstop and then shifted to third base this season when Milam moved from second base to shortstop after Johnson signed Dickinson, a junior and Utah Valley transfer who rated the fourth-best player nationally in the portal.
“Danny the person just far exceeds the player,” Johnson said. “He’s so competitive. He’s been playing with a broken hand since the first game of the NCAA tournament. We lose last night’s game (Saturday’s 1-0 game one win over Coastal) without Michael’s defense. And Steven Milam got better, especially down the stretch.”
Johnson’s dogged recruiting to upgrade talent is most evident in the infield. His first LSU team in 2022 committed 82 errors. That number dropped to 59 on the ’23 national championship team, 51 last year, and finally 44 this season.
Starting pitchers Kade Anderson and Eyanson raced from the dugout to join the mound party, as did relievers Zac Cowan and Casan Evans.
Sophomore Anderson, named the Most Outstanding Player of the CWS, junior transfers Eyanson (UC San Diego) and Cowan (Wofford) and true freshman Evans were expertly developed to carry the throwing load by veteran pitching coach Nate Yeskie.
Anderson went from a little-used freshman a year ago to this season’s Division I strikeout leader and the projected first overall pick in July’s upcoming Major League draft.
Eyanson transformed from someone who was shelled for 11 hits and eight runs in his first two SEC starts to finish with a 3.00 ERA and second nationally in strikeouts behind Anderson.
The duo of All-SEC first-team honoree Cowan and unflappable rookie Evans combined for 13 saves, a 131-to-31 strikeouts-to-walk ratio, and a 2.49 earned run average.
Anderson was speaking for the entire pitching staff when he said, “I trust what he (Yeskie) does and just believe him.”
Last to join Sunday’s dogpile were outfielders Derek Curiel, Chris Stanfield, and Jake Brown, arriving shortly after designated hitter Ethan Frey.
Frey, a junior, shook off an injury-filled sophomore season and batted .331 with 50 RBI and home runs. His four extra-base hits and six RBI carried LSU in the Baton Rouge Regionals.
Auburn junior transfer Stanfeld, a speedster covering center field, finished batting .298. His eight NCAA tourney hits produced 10 RBI.
LSU will build next year’s outfield around Stanfield if isn’t drafted, rising junior Brown and rising sophomore Curiel.
Brown batted .320 with 48 RBI and eight homers despite alternating with Josh Pearson as the starting right fielder. Curiel, one of four Tigers to start all 68 games this season, was a freshman All-American first-team selection after starting the year with a 43-game on-base streak and finishing with a team-high .345 batting average.
“As far as putting it (the 2025 Tigers) together, I just felt like we were a little short last year, and it wasn’t by much,” Johnson said. “But it was just a little short of being able to win any type of game. And I did what I did (in recruiting) to give us the opportunity to do this”.
Even before Wednesday’s scheduled national championship celebration in Alex Box Stadium, Johnson has already been knee-deep in piecing together his 2026 roster.
Once the final Alex Box hurrah has sounded, he’ll throw himself fully into recruiting the transfer portal for the next 1 ½ months.
He’s done the same thing the last two summers, especially when LSU came up one out short last June of winning a road Super Regional at North Carolina.
It’s the new recruiting game of NIL and the revolving transfer portal door, and nobody plays it better than Johnson. He readily accepts the daily pressure of feeding and nurturing the LSU baseball feast.
He understands Tigers’ baseball backers are no different than Alabama football and Kentucky baseball fans, all of whom expect to challenge for national championships every year.
The 48-year-old Johnson lives to play in Omaha annually. And he may eventually try a Rocco’s jello shot. .
When he retires in 20 years or so.
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com