Cooper Moore wouldn’t have uprooted his life and moved nearly 800 miles away from Lawrence, Kansas to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for any other reason than to pitch at the premier college baseball program. Saturday was Moore’s first real chance to prove why and it was an impressive debut.
Behind his 11 strikeouts, a new career-best, Moore pitched an absolute gem and delivered LSU (2-0) its first series win of the season over Milwaukee (0-2). Moore threw six stellar innings of one-run ball and lived in the strike zone
all afternoon long, landing 61 of his 76 pitches for strikes.
“We’ve been seeing this from Cooper since October,” Jay Johnson said. “He was our best-performing pitcher in the fall, so it was not a surprise to us that has this type of outing today. Cooper has great self-belief, and I think those guys that have that are special, and we really need that. He pitches like he needs to win, and we certainly so that today.”
Offense was hard to come by for both sides, as this was a 2-1 ball game heading into the home half of the seventh inning. In fact, Milwaukee ended up out-hitting LSU 9 to 8, and the Tigers didn’t get a baserunner aboard until Trent Caraway led off the third with a single.
LSU’s first two runs came in the third inning, the first coming from a Derek Curiel sacrifice fly that scored Caraway, and the other coming from a Jake Brown RBI single through the right side that scored Chris Stanfield.
But the way Moore pitched today, two runs may as well have been 200 as Milwaukee had no chance against the new Tiger starter. Moore struck out at least two batters in each of the game’s first five innings; and for the second contest in a row, Tiger pitching combined to strike out 17 Panther batters.
Mavrick Rizy made his first appearance of 2026, coming on for Moore in the seventh inning. His command was a little off today. On the one hand, he struck out three in 1.2 innings pitched, on the other hand he hit two batters—one in the seventh, and one in the eighth. Rizy got off to a good start in the eighth with a swinging strikeout and 4-3 groundout to open the frame, but he hit Milwaukee first basemen Grant Ross on a full count and with the tying run aboard, Jay Johnson went to the pen and brought in lefty Ethan Plog.
Plog’s LSU debut wasn’t nearly as memorable as Moore’s. Plog gave up a single to the first batter he faced as a Tiger, threw a wild pitch to advance Milwaukee runners to second and third, and was removed from the game midway through the second batter he was facing.
Johnson called upon D-II transfer Dax Dathe to get out of the two-on, two-out jam, and Dathe rewarded that faith with a strikeout to preserve LSU’s 2-1 lead.
Perhaps sparked by Dathe’s clutch strikeout, the Tiger offense went out and got some insurance in the home half of the seventh. Chris Stanfield, back batting in his familiar 9-hole, led off the frame with a double and moved to third off a bunt single by Curiel. Stanfield, however, would get gunned down at home by Ross, who kept a hard hit grounder by Jake Brown in the infield and made the throw easily.
No matter though. With runners on the corners and just one out, Steven Milam came through on a full count with a two-run double to give the Tigers a 4-1 lead.
“Steven was being Steven, ‘Mr. Clutch,’” Johnson said. “Time and time again, we never have a doubt he’s going to do what he needs to do in those moments, and he delivered with a big two-run double.”
One batter later, Cade Arrambide came up with an RBI double of his own to up LSU’s lead to 5-1. Arrambide’s been killing Milwaukee pitching through the first two games of this series: 4-8, two doubles, a homer, four RBI, and three runs scored.
Thankfully, LSU had that 5-1 lead going into the ninth because this Milwaukee team didn’t go quietly. Dathe was relieved after giving up a single to open up the ninth for Zac Cowan, and his first appearance of 2026 was a mixed bag. Cowan gave up a double to Panther second basemen Tate Schmidt, but responded with back-to-back strikeouts to put Milwaukee on the brink. Cowan couldn’t get that third K to end the game, though he got close.
Cowan had Milwaukee’s Dylan O’Connell and Dominic Kibler each down to their final strike, but both batters came through with run-producing singles that got Milwaukee to within 5-3. With the go-ahead run at the plate, Jay Johnson went to his pen one last time, and called on fifth-year senior Grant Fontenot to close the game out.
And that is indeed what Fontenot did, as Fontenot needed just two pitches to close the game out and earn his first save of the 2026 season. Fontenot reached back and hit 99 with his first pitch, and on pitch No. 2 he got Ross to fly out and end the game.
LSU goes for the sweep tomorrow afternoon, with William Schmidt set to make his season debut. First pitch will once again be at 1:00 P.M., and the game may be streamed via SEC Network+.
