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LSU baseball rides clutch pitching to narrow series-opening win over Omaha
By Paul Harvey
Published:
LSU baseball opened its season with 4 straight blowout victories, but Friday featured the first close call of the season for the Tigers.
In a 3-game series vs. Purdue-Fort Wayne and a one-off against Southern, LSU was outscoring opponents 45-3. However, Omaha arrived for a 3-game series in Baton Rouge ready to battle.
After the Tigers took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the 2nd and pushed it to 4-0 in the 5th inning, Omaha was ready to respond. The Mavericks chased starting pitcher Kade Anderson in the top of the 6th and forced 2 runs across to make it 4-2.
It was far from a poor outing for Anderson. He registered 8 strikeouts and limited the damage to 2 earned runs across 5.1 quality innings pitched.
After the Tigers got into the 8th inning, LSU turned the ball over to freshman Casan Evans on the mound, and he was lights out. He would allow just one batter to reach via a walk but was otherwise spotless with 5 strikeouts and 2 scoreless innings in relief to register the save.
Evans’s final pitch of the night was a beautiful strikeout to give LSU a 5-0 start to the season while securing its first clutch performance of the season:
Offensively, the Tigers were led by Luis Hernandez with 2 doubles and an RBI while Steven Milam and Jake Brown also added RBIs in the win. It was LSU’s first game of truly struggling at the dish while finishing with 6 strikeouts across the top 3 spots in the batting order and 8 strikeouts overall.
LSU and Omaha will be back in action on Saturday with first pitch slated for 1 pm ET in a traditional doubleheader. Stay up to date on all the odds on the Tigers with your favorite Louisiana sports betting app.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
