My sister graduated from grad school last weekend and I was unable to see a single pitch of LSU’s series against Georgia, which is unfortunate because I missed the Dawgs essentially end LSU’s season and rendered this weekend against Florida meaningless.
Florida (35-18, 16-12) jumped on LSU (29-25, 9-19) early and held on late for a game one win. Florida scored six runs in the first inning, highlighted by a grand slam from Ethan Surowiec. The Gators pushed four runs across before recording an out.
“Florida is a good offense with good players, and you can’t give them opportunities to score,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “We essentially gave them four runs without swinging the bat with the free bases.”
From then…I mean I don’t know what to tell you: it’s the same stuff we’ve seen from this LSU team all season long. Tiger pitching issued 13 walks and mixed in three wild pitches for good measure. Danny Lachenmayer got the Thursday night start and didn’t make it out of the first inning.
The silver lining from the pitching staff was Reagan Ricken had the best outing of his freshman season: 4.1 innings in relief of Lachenmayer, four hits, two runs, five strikeouts, and he was the only LSU pitcher to not walk anybody (though he did hit one batter). Ricken at one point retired eight straight Gator batters before plunking Hayden Yost.
If LSU is to have any hope of winning this series or going on an improbable run to Hoover, they’ll have to rely on its offense, and luckily the bats have woken up the past few weekends. The top-five of LSU’s lineup (Braun, Serna, Curiel, Arrambide, Milam) were responsible for 10 of LSU’s 12 hits. Braun went 2-5 at the leadoff spot, Serna went 2-5 with a double and a homer, his ninth, and Milam had a three-hit day including a home run in the sixth.
“We feel like the strength of our team is the offense at the top of the order,” Johnson said, “and the first five guys in the lineup did the job again tonight with 10 of our 12 hits.”
Game two of this series will be at 6:30 P.M. with Marcos Paz expected to get the starting nod for the Tigers.
