Champions Again!!! LSU Beats Coastal Carolina 5-3 to Win 8th National Championship!!!

8 is Great

It never gets old does it?

For the eighth time in program history and second time in three years, the Tigers are champions of the college baseball world after LSU beat Coastal Carolina 5-3. Kade Anderson was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Tournament after allowing just one run in 16 total innings across two starts.

Sunday couldn’t have gotten off to a weirder start. In the bottom of the first inning, Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall and first base coach Matt Schilling were ejected from the game after arguing balls and strikes. Home plate umpire Angel Campos gave a warning to Schnall and told him to stay in the dugout numerous times, but Schnall wouldn’t stay in and Campos tossed him.

Coastal was able to channel the emotion of the ejection as Dean Mihos took Anthony Eyanson deep to left field to give Coastal Carolina a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning. It wasn’t the hardest hit ball (91 MPH exit velocity), but it kept carrying and carrying and just barely got over the fence and Derek Curiel’s outstretched arm.

LSU wouldn’t be deterred, however and the bats responded immediately. Daniel Dickinson led off the top of the third with a leadoff single and moved to second thanks to a sacrifice bunt laid down by Michael Braswell. Curiel flew out to left field for the second out of the inning, but Ethan Frey tied the game with a double to left field.

Working with a whole new ball game, Eyanson threw up four straight scoreless innings. He needed three total pitches to get the first two outs of the third inning, gave a bloop two-out single, but got Blake Barthol to strike out to end the inning.

For all intents and purposes, the fourth inning is when LSU won the national championship. Coastal Carolina starter Jacob Morrison walked Jake Brown to lead off the fourth, Jared Jones then worked a single to move Brown to third. Morrision then plunked Luis Hernandez to load the bases, and Chris Stanfield gave LSU a lead they wouldn’t give up with a two-run single.

Trailing 3-1, it looked like Morrison bounced back. Dickinson laid down a sacrifice bunt to advance Hernandez and Stanfield, and Michael Braswell popped out for the second out of the inning, but Curiel, now seeing Morrison for a third time, came through with a liner up the middle. Coastal turned to their ace to save their season, and instead he had his shortest outing of the year and gave up a season-worst five runs.

Thankfully LSU was able to push four runs across in that fourth inning because the Tigers wouldn’t score again for the rest of the game, but Coastal was able to somewhat chip away at LSU’s lead.

In the bottom of the seventh, Eyanson plunked Ty Dooley to lead the inning off and then Wells Sykes took him deep to make it a 5-3 game. That, thankfully, wouldn’t be the last batter Eyanson faced as an LSU Tiger. He was able to get Coastal’s star catcher Caden Bodine to fly out to centerfield, and that’s when Jay Johnson made the move to bring in Chase Shores out of the bullpen. Eyanson’s final line as a Tiger: 6.1 innings, seven hits, three runs, nine strikeouts and, most importantly, the win.

Shores was once again masterful out of the pen and got credited with his second save of the season. Shores pitched the final two and two-thirds of the game and was pounding the strike zone with 100 MPH fastball after 100 MPH fastball. In what could have been his final outing as a Tiger, Shores threw 22 of his 28 pitches for strikes and struck out four.

Also want to take some time to shoutout Michael Braswell, who reached base in each of his final two at bats as a Tiger. Braswell walked in the sixth and then finally broke through with a single in the eighth inning, and he got a well deserved ovation from the Tiger fans in attendance. That kid had a horrible go of things at the plate, but never let it effect his defense and that base hit had to have meant the world to him.

In the bottom of the eighth, Shores had an easy 1-2-3 inning. He struck out two and got a ground out to get LSU on the doorstep of No. 8.

There was a tiny bit of drama in the ninth inning when Shores gave up a leadoff single to bring the tying run to the plate. But like any good closer, Shores didn’t blink. He got Dooley to strikeout in four pitches, and then got Sykes to hit into a game-ending, championship-clinching double play.

To quote Chris Blair after LSU won it all in 2023 “all is right with the world.” LSU was pushed to the brink of elimination by Little Rock in the Baton Rouge Regional round, trailed that Game 7 by a score of 5-1, but then never looked back. The Tigers rallied back to survive the scare from the Trojans, swept West Virginia, and swept through Omaha. They eliminated Arkansas, snapped Coastal’s 26-game win streak, and further cemented themselves as the dominant program in college baseball. Jay Johnson’s climbed the mountain twice now in four years in Baton Rouge and is now the fasted coach in college baseball history to win multiple national championships at a school.

Cheers to the Tigers and Jay and Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson and Bear Jones and Steven Milam and Derek Curiel and everyone in between. Let’s do it again next year.

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