JOURNAL SPORTS
BATON ROUGE – LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson wants to win every game, but he really wanted to beat visiting Northwestern State Tuesday night.
Not because the Demons shocked the eventual national champions 13-3 last year.
These Tigers have lost more than their share of midweek or early-season games to non-Power 4 teams. They came in on a four-game skid after losing to Bethune-Cookman last Tuesday, and getting swept by Ole Miss in Oxford over the weekend.
Still, it was a little surprising when LSU baseball icon Skip Bertman visited with the Tigers before the game.
It was more telling when Johnson gave the ball to his top bullpen performer, senior Zac Cowan, to open the game, and followed him with senior Grant Fontenot, whose 2.92 ERA leads LSU.
The approach paid off, not without eighth-inning stress.
Jake Brown’s three-run home run with two outs in the fifth inning drove in three unearned runs and lifted the Tigers to a 4-2 victory at Skip Bertman Field at Alex Box Stadium.
Nine LSU pitchers contributed to an effort that limited Northwestern to two runs – just one earned on five hits with two walks and 16 strikeouts.
“That was one of the best-pitched games we’ve had here in a while,” said Johnson. “I’m very proud of the pitching staff; all the way through, there were really good efforts. Northwestern State is a good team, since I’ve been the coach here, this is the team that always competes against us the hardest in midweek games.”
The Demons, Southland Conference leaders, dipped to 23-14. The Tigers, beginning a five-game homestand cornerstoned by a weekend series with Texas A&M, improved to 23-15. LSU had a 72 RPI entering the night while NSU was at 99 in the NCAA’s rankings.
“There’s something to be said about the level of competition and the level of fight our guys continue to show,” third-year Northwestern coach Chris Betrand said. “That’s two out of the last three years that we’ve played one of the best teams in the land within one swing of a ball game at their home ballpark. I’m really proud of the way our guys came ready to play and really proud of the way they competed in a close ball game in an incredible environment, but it comes down to that level of production and getting the job done in the game’s biggest moments.”
The biggest moment for both teams came in the fifth inning.
Tied at 1 after the teams traded solo home runs in the early innings, the Demons struck for a run in the top of the fifth, building it with the help of two LSU errors.
Bryce Johnson led off with a single and took second on an errant pickoff throw from Reagan Ricken. After Mason Wray, whose first home run of the season gave Northwestern a 1-0 lead in the second inning, reached on catcher’s interference, Zach White laid down a sacrifice bunt.
Sam Ardoin’s grounder to short gave the Demons the lead before Carson Benge (1-0) escaped further trouble.
In the bottom of the fifth, the Tigers put the leadoff man on by virtue of the Demons’ lone error of the game.
After Chase Prestwich (1-2) got a key fielder’s choice to record the second out, Northwestern went to left-hander Jacob LeBlanc, who got ahead of Brown, a left-handed slugger, 1-2 before Brown tagged the fourth pitch for a three-run home run to right-center field for a 4-2 LSU lead.
After Brown’s home run, the pitching staffs from each side took turns dancing out of trouble.
LeBlanc, Lucas Harrington and Airline product Carter White kept LSU off the scoreboard in the final three innings, allowing the Demons to build one final push in the eighth inning.
Northwestern loaded the bases before Deven Sheerin came in and got a strikeout and a foul out to end the threat. Sheerin then struck out the side in the ninth for his third save of the season.
“We competed in a great way, but when the game requires you to execute and be productive in order to win, we have to be better in those moments,” Bertrand said. “For the first five innings of the game, our offense was those things, regardless of what’s on the scoreboard. In innings six, seven, eight and nine, we struck out 11 times when they only have to collect 12 outs.”
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