McNeese shocks LSU, hands Tigers first loss of the season

Published 12:41 am Wednesday, February 25, 2026

LSU wasn’t going to go undefeated this year.

But McNeese was not a likely candidate to hand the Tigers their first loss of this season and snap LSU’s 16-game overall winning streak dating back to the last year’s national championship run.

But that’s baseball.

So it didn’t matter that the No. 2-ranked Tigers came in perfect at 8-0 this season and the Cowboys were a mere 2-5.

Or that LSU was coming off of an impressive three-game sweep of a power-four tournament in Florida and that McNeese had just been bashed in three straight games at home against Kansas.

McNeese’s previously shaky pitching staff held one of the county’s hottest hitting teams in check for most of the night and the Cowboys took advantage of LSU’s sloppy early pitching to beat the Tigers 7-6 in LSU’s Alex Box Stadium.

It was the Cowboys’ first win over the Tigers since 2019.

And it couldn’t have come at a better time for the Cowboys.

“Any time you beat those guys at their place, that’s a good time, good timing,” McNeese head coach Justin Hill said. “We’ve played some really good teams, that was obviously the best one.”

McNeese opened up a 7-2 lead until LSU chipped away with two runs in the fifth and single runs in the sixth and eighth to cut it to 8-7 on John Pearson’s solo home run in the eighth.

The Tigers got the potential tying and go-ahead runs on first and second in the bottom of the ninth with one out but Brady Corcoran came on to strike out Omar Serna and survived Seth Dardar’s fly ball to the warning track for the final out.

“It was just one of those games, you don’t feel good until the last out,” Hill said. “And the last out was on the warning track.”

LSU took 2-0 lead early on Zach Yorke’s towering 2-run homer, but the Tigers didn’t score again until McNeese built a  7-2 lead in the fifth.

McNeese lefthander Jarius Miller deservedly got the win in relief of Connor Achee. The freshman from Barbe held LSU to just one hit and no runs over three innings while striking out five Tigers.

“He gave us nine outs out of the bullpen,” Hill said. “He did a great job of settling the game down for us. Pitched out of some traffic in his first inning.

LSU’s pitching hit McNeese hitters almost as hard as the Cowboys hitters hit LSU pitching.

LSU actually out-hit McNeese 8-7 but the Cowboys scored all seven of their runs in the first five innings while the Tigers were gift-wrapping 11 base runners on six walks and five hit batters.

LSU used nine pitchers, the Cowboys used eight.

“We knew we were going to have to use a lot of different arms,” said Hill, whose team opens Southland Conference play this weekend against Nicholls State.

“It wasn’t the prettiest game,” Hill admitted. “It was ugly in some ways. But we came out on top.”

The Cowboys took control of the game with four runs in the second inning. They took advantage of two walks, two hit batters and a wild pitch to jump-start the inning. They scored all four runs after LSU got the first two outs.

“We’ve been behind before, multiple games, early on,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “But it seemed like our response was a little … maybe we got outside of ourselves in just taking the quality at bats.

“It took almost to when it was 7-2 to kind of get back in rhythm. I thought we ended the game starting to put it together. I think we scored in three of the last four innings.”

Three of the last five, actually, but who’s counting.

Danny Barbaro led McNeese with two RBIs, while Larry Edwards had two hits while scoring a run and driving in another. Seth Fontenot scored twice.

“It’s not every day you beat those guys,” Hill said. “So it’s a big deal for us. LSU is going to be just fine. I hope maybe we’ll get to play them again.”

Hard to blame him. The only way the two would meet again this year would be in the NCAA tournament.