LSU Eliminates A&M to Reach SEC Tournament Semifinals

Enjoy your summer, Aggies

Sports aren’t scripted, and that’s why it’s far more dramatic, shocking, and unpredictable than even the best written movies or TV shows.

Take Friday night at the SEC Tournament for example, when Jay Johnson used Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson together to help LSU survive and advance to the semifinal round after beating Texas A&M 4-3.

“We have asked a lot out of these two guys, and they are the reason that we are sitting here, the reason we’re not getting on an airplane to go play from this point forward,” Johnson said. “So I felt like this was a good week to kind of minimize what we asked of them and their load to get them fresher and better for next week.”

Anderson got his usual Friday night start and was locked in from the first pitch. Anderson was perfect through the first three innings and struck out eight of the first nine Aggie batters. He ended the night with 12 Ks in six innings and made history in two different ways: 1) he had the most strikeouts by an LSU pitcher in an SEC Tournament game and 2) he was the first pitcehr in SEC Tournament history to get 12 Ks without pitching into the seventh inning.

Early on it looked like LSU was going to cruise into the semifinal round. LSU scored a pair of runs in the bottom of the first inning when Ethan Frey hit an RBI double to get the Tigers on the board, and then Luis Hernandez followed with a run-scoring groundout. LSU would plate two more in the third inning when Frey crushed a ball to left.

The problem, however, was that home run would be LSU’s final base hit of the night. Not only that, it was the last time a Tiger reached base in any capacity.

LSU’s next 16 batters would all be retired, and Aggie reliever Clayton Freshcorn pitched a perfect 3.1 innings of relief. LSU only managed four hits for the entire night, none coming after the third inning.

With the LSU offense clocked out for the night, the onus was on Anderson to keep Texas A&M at bay. The Ags cut the 4-0 deficit in half in the fourth inning, when Jace LaViolette hit an RBI single down the right field line, then Gavin Kash followed with a sacrifice fly.

A&M was able to score its third run in the sixth inning, but blew an opportunity to tie the game. With runners on the corners and nobody out, LaViolette hit a sacrifice fly to bring in Texas A&M’s third run, but Bear Harrison hit into an inning-ending double play.

That’s when Eyanson took the mound, coming on in relief for the first time this season. He gave up a lead off triple to Kash and Ben Royo drove what looked like the tying run, but runner’s interference was called upon review. A&M tried to bunt the tying run across but Kash didn’t go home, and Eyanson struck out Hayden Schott to end the seventh.

Eyanson made things interesting in the ninth inning when, after striking out the first two batters of the inning, he walked Kash to put the tying run on. Nathan Tobin came on to run for Kash and made it to third when Royo singled to right. But Terrence Kiel would hit into a game-ending fielder’s choice and LSU is on to the semifinal round.

If, coming into Hoover, there was any iota of doubt about LSU being a national seed, Friday night erased that last little bit. It sounds as though Jay Johnson’s only concern was winning one game, and he elected to use his two very best pitchers to achieve that objective. Anderson threw 84 pitches, Eyanson threw 46, now they can rest up and be ready for next week’s regional at Alex Box Stadium. Oh, and as an added bonus LSU also ended the season of the preseason No. 1 team in the country.

The bigger worry, however, is LSU went five full innings without getting a baserunner aboard against a team that was running out of arms. Maybe for a night Freshcorn turned into Nolan Ryan, but we’ve been seeing a lot of these offensive outputs by LSU the past couple of weeks for me to think this was just one bad night. Maybe it won’t matter next week in the Regional and (hopefully) in the Super Regional because LSU’s a completely different team at The Box, but that’s the thing: they’re a completely different (read: worse) team when they’re not at home. LSU’s more than good enough to get to Omaha, but can they win in Omaha? We’ll find out in the coming weeks.

Up next, LSU will play Ole Miss in the semifinal round and the winner will advance to play the winner of Tennessee-Vanderbilt. The weather in the Hoover area forced first pitch for Tennessee-Vandy to 10:00 A.M., and game two is scheduled for 30 minutes after the conclusion of that game.