LSU Eliminates Oregon State to Reach College World Series Finals

“To me, the key of stopping Oregon State was to keep those two guys off base as much as possible”, LSU coach Paul Mainieri said.

There comes a time when all college baseball coaches must resolve what to do about the ultimate dilemma – choosing between winning championships by any means necessary or maybe risking a pitcher’s health.

Mainieri’s base salary of $1.125 million has already been raised to $1.52 million, and could rise to $1.545 million if LSU can outlast Florida in Omaha.

LSU will await the victor of Saturday night’s matchup between the TCU Horned Frogs and Florida Gators, before a best-of-three series will begin on Monday night from TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha.

Though it shouldn’t come as a surprise, LSU and Florida will do battle for the national title today, and, potentially, for two more days.

These two teams met in the regular season, with Florida taking two out of three games. “I think both teams are happy with who is in the finals”.

So how do you coach a team to win like that? The two schools shared the Southeastern Conference regular season title. Josh Smith walked and Beau Jordan doubled, which set up left-handed-hitting Papierski to clobber a 3-1 pitch to right for a 3-0 Tigers lead.

Seven great innings from Brady Singer followed by a lockdown save by Michael Byrne put Kevin O’Sullivan’s team one win away from winning the all-SEC finals over LSU. “He and I met one day and said, ‘Look, let’s do it the way you’ve done it your whole life'”. Dyson threw five shutout innings in the Super Regional clincher against Wake Forest – by far his longest game of the season.

“Nobody takes care of arms better than we do”, said O’Sullivan.

Manieri acknowledged they have some exhausted pitchers right now, and that has led to a little unusual of a choice for who takes the mound today. “I don’t think the weekend in March has anything to do with what’s going to happen here in the next couple of days”.

The top four batters in the Tigers lineup are hitting below.200 as a group in the College World Series – Robertson (.190/4-for-21), Cole Freeman (.158/3-for-19), Duplantis (.263/5-for-19) and Greg Deichmann (.167/3-for-18). He struck out seven and walked only one. The best-of-three finals start Monday.

Florida is hitting.259 as a team with 53 home runs, and the Gators have 83 steals in 112 attempts. While he didn’t rule out Faedo pitching out of the bullpen, the Gators will likely be without their ace.

The sophomore right-hander began this season without a defined role after throwing 16 innings a year ago for the Gators, who had come to Omaha as the No. 1 seed last year and lost both games.

The games will be televised on ESPN, and they may also be viewed online at WatchESPN.com and the Watch ESPN app. LSU saved face in the series by having success against UF righthander Jackson Kowar, heading back to Baton Rouge with a 10-6 victory.

“The leg kick really helped me staying behind the baseball and not lunging and trying to go get it”, says Papierski.

“I have to go out and make the pitches”, Byrne said.

When the two teams met earlier this season, Watson was a good role player, but he wasn’t a guy who had the ability to take over a game and be a fire-starter.