GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Jay Johnson felt like he was opening presents when he became LSU’s baseball coach on June 24, 2021.
“The thought was, ‘Hey, there’s nothing bad about LSU,'” Johnson said Thursday as the No. 6 national seed Tigers (43-14) prepared to open NCAA Regional play at Alex Box Stadium Friday (2 p.m., SEC Network) against Arkansas-Little Rock (24-32).
“It’s LSU. It’s Skip Bertman. It’s the championships,” said Johnson, who had taken Arizona to a pair of College World Series in Omaha before taking the job.
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He also heard a lot about 13,000-seat Alex Box Stadium, some of which he thought was leaning a little toward exaggeration.
“But nobody told me about the weather, which I learned quickly in like September in that fall of 2021,” Johnson said. “It was raining every day at two o’clock.”
Some of Baton Rouge’s worst rains have happened during postseason at the Box. There was so much rain and delays at the Southeastern Conference Tournament at Alex Box in 1991 that games were cut to seven innings.
“Personally, I’m glad the tournament from Hell is over, to be very honest,” Bertman said after losing it to Florida. The rain continued, and the field was still a swamp the next week for the NCAA Regional, so Bertman got an Acadian Ambulance helicopter to try to blow dry the field. In the end, LSU rose from the gooey mud to reach Omaha and win its first national title.
As sure as the sun came up on Friday, afternoon thunderstorms were in the forecast with a 51 percent chance of rain by the 2 p.m. first pitch and 90 percent humidity, but temperatures only expected as high as the low 80s.
Dallas Baptist (40-16) and Rhode Island (38-20) play in the second game at 6:30 p.m. Friday in the double-elimination, four team NCAA Regional at Alex Box. The two winners meet at 5 p.m. Saturday.
“How to navigate the weather is very important,” said Johnson, who now could practically work for The Weather Channel now. LSU has had more than 20 weather-related delays this season.
But he wasn’t ready for his first NCAA postseason at the Box in 2023. The Tigers’ Super Regional opener against Kentucky was supposed to start at 2 p.m. It started at 9:06 p.m. He also wasn’t prepared for the Box to be refilled to the brim at 12,452.
When Tre Morgan homered in the bottom of the first inning for a 1-0 lead, he knew he wasn’t in Arizona anymore.
“I was like, ‘That’s what everybody’s been telling me about,'” he remembered Thursday. “That sound right there, and that was a delayed game.”
LSU won that won 14-0 with the game ending just before midnight. The Box pushed Johnson and the Tigers to Omaha the next day with an 8-3 win in front of 12,640. With the Tigers leading just 5-3 in the top of the ninth, Dylan Crews stroked a two-run double to highlight a four-run rally and the Box went to lift-off.
“Dylan hit the bases-clearing double, and it’s like, ‘We’re going to Omaha,'” Johnson said. “That was the fork. Just remember hearing that. And it’s happened a couple of times this year.”
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In the series opener against Arkansas on May 9, LSU’s bats on Box fuel touched up relief ace Aiden Jimenez for two runs on two hits and two walks in the seventh to tie it 4-4 before winning 5-4 in 10 innings.
“Jimenez hadn’t given up anything to anybody out of the bullpen,” Johnson said of the sophomore right-hander who is 4-1 with a 3.37 ERA now with 27 strikeouts in 20 and a third innings and one home run and a .169 batting average allowed.
“And all of a sudden, we’ve got two guys on and tied the game,” he said. “And I think the fans really made a difference there. And Tennessee, of course, as well.”
LSU came back from a 3-0 deficit with six in the bottom of the ninth for a 6-3 win over Tennessee on a three-run, walk-off home run by Jared Jones at 1:17 a.m. on April 27 in front of 12,919. Lightning delayed the start of the game from 6:30 p.m. to 9:55 p.m.
“There’s no better team at 1 in the morning than the LSU Tigers. That’s for darn sure,” Johnson said at the time.
“So, I think Alex Box exceeding or living up to the hype and the expectation of what the the fans do here,” Johnson said when asked what he learned about LSU from his first two NCAA Regional and Super Regional weekends in 2023 as the Tigers’ coach. “That lived up to the hype.”
Bertman, too, credited Alex Box for wins.
“The thing is we probably shouldn’t have won that 1990 Regional (against USC),” Bertman says in the “Everything Matters In Baseball” book about his career. “We weren’t a great team yet, and USC was very good. But we were better because we were at home. The fans really rocked out in 1990.”
And they’re still rocking with the move from its original spot on Nicholson Drive closer to Tiger Stadium to its present location in 2009.
“As a kid growing up, you dream of these moments,” LSU ace pitcher Kade Anderson said as if it was Christmas morning. Anderson (8-1, 3.54 ERA) may start today’s game. The sophomore right-hander from Madisonville leads the nation in strikeouts with 145 in 89 innings.
“There was a different energy with the team today,” Johnson said Thursday – aka Christmas Eve. “Like, it’s here. They don’t don’t necessarily want to run through Jay Johnson’s practice number 157 for the year. They want to get on the field and compete. You could sense it. It makes me very happy.”
Merry Christmas! And everybody’s coming over to open the big Box this afternoon.
“The fans are great,” Johnson said. “I think they’re great on a Tuesday night against a non-conference opponent. And not everybody has what we have. There are 16 teams hosting this weekend, but not all of them have what we have while we’re hosting. I’m very grateful for that.”
Johnson has not announced a starting pitcher for Friday’s game. Senior right-hander Jackson Wells (3-6, 5.24 ERA, 90 strikeouts, 79 innings) or senior right-hander Jack Cline (8-5, 4.83 ERA, 62 strikeouts, 82 innings) is expected to start for Arkansas-Little Rock.
Wells was 7-4 with the nation’s No. 1 ERA in 2023 at 1.65, edging out LSU’s Paul Skenes (13-2, 1.69 ERA) that season.
Neither Wells nor Cline has pitched in The Box.
“The separator for us is the care level,” Johnson said – other than the weather. “I mean, college baseball at some places is a channel changer. It’s not important in other parts of the country. It’s really important here. And it’s why I value my job and carry it with a lot of respect and high regard. Because there are very few places in the country – maybe like four or five – that are kind of like this. But I don’t think anywhere is like this in terms of care level. And it makes it awesome.”
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