FRIDAY’S GAME – LSU 4, Texas A&M 3

SATURDAY’S GAME — LSU vs. Ole Miss (Approximately 1:30 p.m. / SEC Network)

 LSU removed any doubt that the Tigers were taking its opening game of the Southeastern Conference tournament seriously.

In the process the Tigers probably made finishing the job in the tournament harder.

But LSU used both of its two starting co-aces on the mound anyway and needed all 16 strike outs between Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson to hold off Texas A&M 4-3.

LSU (43-13) advances to play No. 7 seed Ole Miss, which beat No. 2 seed Arkansas 5-2. The threat of bad weather changed Saturday’s start times, and LSU’s game will be played 30 minutes following the 10 a.m. game between Vanderbilt and Tennessee.

LSU coach Jay Johnson noted that “The four teams left are four of the last five national champions. Let’s get after it and see if we can be the champion of the champions.”

The Tigers and Rebels did not play during this regular season for the first time in 50 years.

LSU’s Ethan Frey hit one home run and missed another by inches for an RBI double. He drove in three of the Tigers’ four runs.

But after Frey’s two-run bomb on an 0-2 count put the Tigers up 4-0 in the third inning, LSU didn’t have another base runner and finished with only four hits.

Fortunately, they had Anderson and Eyanson.

“It took our best to win tonight,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “And our best is these two guys (Anderson and Eyanson).”

Anderson struck out eight of the first nine batters he faced and finished with 12 whiffs in just six innings of work.

Eyanson had four strike outs in his first relief appearance of the season and saved the game with a masterful Houdini impression.

Using dual aces did complicate things, however.

“I don’t know who (Ole Miss) is going to pitch tomorrow,” Johnson said. “I haven’t decided who we’re going to pitch tomorrow.”

But Johnson said he decided a week ago that both Anderson and Eyanson would pitch in the Tigers’ SEC tournament opener.

“We have two Friday starters,” Johnson said of why he used both. “It gives us flexibility next week depending what the matchups look like.”

By holding pitch counts down, he said, either could start the first game of next week’s NCAA tournament regional.

A quirky rule and a masterful escape job by Eyanson saved the game for LSU.

Eyanson came on to start the seventh, which opened with centerfielder Chris Stanfield misplaying a line drive into a triple that put the tying run on third with no outs.

A&M appeared to tie the game on Ben Royo’s bunt — complicated when Michael Braswell’s throw to first got past Jared Jones.

But runners’ interference was called —instead of a tie game and the go-ahead run on third with no outs, Royo was ruled out at first for the infraction and Kash was sent back to third.

Eyanson then got out of the jam scoreless on a bunt back to the mound that kept the runner at the third and a strike out.

“He’s the best pitcher in the country at wiggling his way out of trouble,” Johnson said of Eyanson. “The odds of getting out of a runner on third, no-out situation with a run scoring, are very low. It takes a competitor, a special due like that. And he’s the man.”

Texas A&M, playing its third game in Hoover, finished its season as the Aggies needed to win the whole thing to reach the NCAA tournament.

But the Aggies didn’t go quietly.

Jace LaViolette, a projected first-round draft pick, drove in two of the A&M runs with a sacrifice fly and RBI single — even though he broke his hand Thursday in a win over Auburn.

“It’s one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen,” Aggies coach Michael Early said. “He had surgery yesterday at 7 p.m. and played in a game at 6:45 (Friday). I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Johnson agreed.

To get on the field tonight after this is special,” he said. “Massive hat tip and massive respect to him.”