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Scooter Hobbs

LSU head coach Paul Mainieri preferred to look on the bright side.

“A lot of positive things happened this weekend,” he said.

Sunday wasn’t one of them.

LSU, which won the first two games of the series against Kentucky, fell apart late with a bullpen and defensive implosion as the Wildcats salvaged the final game 13-4.

LSU (20-12, 3-9 SEC) cut the lead to 5-3 on Tre’ Morgan’s two-run homer in the top of the seventh and had to feel good about its chances of rallying for the weekend sweep.

But the Wildcats blew the game open in the bottom of that inning with eight runs off of four LSU relievers.

The key blows were Oraj Anu’s and T.J. Collet’s three-run double, but the Tigers didn’t help themselves with two throwing errors which led to five unearned runs.

“Of course we wanted the sweep,” said Morgan. “But we’ll take two out of three. You put the first two (wins) out front but you don’t forget about this one. We’ve got to be able to close out.”

LSU managed nine hits, but also struck out 10 times.

With Jaden Hill out for the season, Blake Money (1-1) got his first start, giving up a pair of two-run homers but keeping LSU in the game through his five innings. He allowed five runs on six hits while striking out six with no walks.

“I thought Blake handled it pretty well,” Mainieri said. “Obviously made a couple of mistakes and they took advantage of them.

“Really just a couple of changeups that he left up in the zone. He kept competing, kept battling. He showed he can pitch in this league.”

The bullpen didn’t fare as well as five relievers combined to walk four, hit four other batters while giving up seven hits and the eight runs.

“We didn’t play horrible today until the seventh inning,” Mainieri said.

“We’ll identify areas in which we need to improve and continue to look forward to another challenging week of games.”LSU baseball