SEC Tournament

SATURDAY — Ole Miss 2, LSU 0

Thanks to a double-bye, LSU started late in the Southeastern Conference baseball tournament.

The Tigers’ bats never did really show up.

OIe Miss held LSU to just two hits and the Tigers were shut out for the first time this season as the Rebels beat the Tigers 2-0 to advance to Sunday’s championship game against Vanderbilt.

LSU (43-14) went 1-1 in the tournament and returned home to await Monday’s 11 a.m. announcement of which three teams will join the Tigers in Baton Rouge next week for regional play of the NCAA tournament.

“Three hits, two runs (allowed),” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “That’s going to work most of the time for us.”

Not Saturday.

The Tigers, who beat Texas A&M 4-3 on Friday, didn’t score over the final 15 innings of their two-game stay in Hoover, Ala.

The two hits they managed Saturday was a season-low and their first shut-out in the SEC tournament since 2016 in a 1-0 loss to Florida.

LSU used three pitchers — Jaden Noot, Chase Shores and Jacob Mayers — who combined to strike out 14 while holding Ole Miss to the two runs on just three hits.

For the two tournament games, LSU pitching struck out 30.

“I hope that doesn’t get overlooked … all three of those guys,” LSU first baseman Jared Jones said. “It’s tough to go out there and be as bad on offense as we were … when they threw as well as they did. Those guys gave us a real opportunity to win this game.”

The game’s only earned run came a home run by the Rebels’ Will Furniss, the son of former LSU All-American Eddy, who cleared the leftfield wall by inches in the first inning.

Ole Miss’ other run came in the fourth when Noot’s errant pickoff attempt put Isaac Humphrey into scoring position by a single by Campbell Smithwick.

Noot allowed three hits and struck out 7, while Shores threw 2.2 scoreless innings with three strike outs and Mayers kept the Rebels off the board over the final 2.1 innings with four strikeouts.

“Really happy with how Jaden (Noot) … took a step forward last week at South Carolina and took another step forward today against a good team,” Johnson said. “I thought Chase (Shores) was outstanding and Jacob  (Mayers) has been working his tail off. Really glad we got that opportunity for him today.”

Yet it was all for naught as Johnson had one of his LSU teams blanked for only the second time in his four years as head coach.

The Tigers struck out only five times and had a lot of hard-hit outs, but the only hits came from bottom of the order, singles by Cade Arrambide and Chris Stanfield.

“Yeah, I think it’s just baseball,” Jones said. “There’s going to be ups and downs, highs and lows, but we’ve got to be tougher mentally to handle those and weren’t that today at all. We’ll be better for it moving forward.”