By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
The way LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson saw it, the Tigers would be practicing today, watching the other Southeastern Conference Tournament games tonight and getting ready to play Texas A&M in the quarterfinals.
“I thought John Pearson was going to hit a homer, and then Zac Cowan was going to go and get three outs, and we’re playing Texas A&M on Friday,” Johnson said late Wednesday night.
Pearson instead grounded out with the tying runs on base, and LSU lost 3-1 to No. 6 seed Auburn (37-18) to end their season. Auburn will play the Aggies Friday.
The Tigers (30-28) needed to beat Auburn, then Texas A&M on Friday, then win a semifinal on Saturday and the championship game on Sunday to get an automatic NCAA Regional bid after setting the school record for SEC losses in a regular season with a 9-21 mark.
“We had a plan going forward if we could get through this one,” said Johnson, whose No. 14 seeded team out of 16 beat No. 11 Oklahoma, 6-2, on Tuesday night. “I always felt this was going to be the tough game. They were just a little better.”
Just about every SEC team LSU played this season was “just a little better.”
Auburn scored three runs on seven hits with no errors. LSU scored one run on four hits with a costly throwing error in the fifth by second baseman Jack Ruckert that gave Auburn a 2-1 lead.
The Tigers’ loss was their ninth decided by two runs or less out of 13. In the SEC regular season, LSU went 0-15 against teams that finished with league records above .500. Make that 0-16 with the loss to Auburn.
“Against the best teams, we just couldn’t do it,” Johnson lamented. “There’s a lot to that. It’s my job to go to work on that, which I will. We lost a lot of close games this season – like a game like tonight. And winning those has been a hallmark of why we have two national championships in the last four years. I think we were a little short in a lot of areas overall. I mean a lot of areas.”
When LSU won the national championship last season at 53-15 and 19-11 in the SEC, it was 15-7 in two-run games, including the last three in Omaha, Nebraska, at the College World Series – 6-5 over Arkansas and 1-0 and 5-3 over Coastal Carolina.
“Painful, really painful, a lot of days painful this season,” Johnson said. “So it’s hard. It’s raw right now. Like, you can hear a pin drop in the dugout after the game. I feel bad because we didn’t get them to where this team could’ve been. And I don’t know if I’ve ever said that in my entire career.”
LSU returned to Baton Rouge on Thursday morning by bus, and after player and staff meetings over the next few days, Johnson will begin working on 2027 as the portal opens on June 1.
“I won’t be watching much of the NCAA Tournament, I can tell you that,” Johnson said. “I live for the College World Series and being in Omaha, so we have too much to do. But honestly, to be honest, it would be too hard to watch that.”
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