FRIDAY’S GAME: LSU 6, Tennessee 3

 

LSU coach Jay Johnson likes to remind his team that there’s no clock in baseball.

Good thing.

Talk about following up the low point of a season with easily LSU’s most exhilarating moment in many moons.

The Tigers, who were mercy-ruled by Northwestern State Tuesday night, sure took their sweet time about it.

It was just past 1:15 a.m. Saturday morning when No. 7 LSU mounted a rally for the ages as Jared Jones capped a 6-run bottom of the ninth with a walk-off, 3-run home run and a 6-3 comeback victory over No. 6 Tennessee.

“Wow, what a game,” Johnson said. “It’s after 2 a.m. I’ll probably have trouble getting to sleep.

“Major hat tip to all those fans who stayed around. That surprised me.”

The real shocker came minutes earlier.

“You know, there’s rosters, and then there are teams,” Johnson said. “This is a team, and they keep fighting.”

This team needed just about the whole roster in a game that didn’t start until just shy of 10 p.m. due to inclement weather.

Jones is no stranger to long-ball theatrics, but the key blow came from one of the least known Tigers.

All six of the late LSU runs were unearned as a pair of infield errors and a walk loaded the bases with one out.

Johnson pinch-hit with Dalton Beck, sending him to the plate for only his seventh at-bat of the season, just his second in an SEC game.

Beck, a transfer from Incarnate Word who was the Southland Conference’s newcomer of the year last season, responded with a 2-run single up the middle to pull the Tigers to within 3-2 and, one out later, Derek Cutriel slapped the game-tying single past first base.

“It’s one of the more impressive things I’ve ever seen,” Johnson said of Beck’s clutch hit. “And you’re talking about a guy that … literally recruited us (to come to LSU) … and then not one second has he complained about being a role player on this team.

“Just an amazing player.”

Curiel’s tying RBI left it to Jones, who faced a 1-2 count when he bombed the game-winner 452 feet to clear the  batters’ eye in dead centerfield.

The early morning theatrics in a game between the last two College World Series champions improved LSU to 35-8 and tied the Tigers with Arkansas for second place in the SEC at 13-6.

The Vols, last year’s national champions, fell to 34-8, 12-7.

“That was amazing,” Johnson said.

Only the most optimistic among the surprisingly large crowd that stuck around until the end saw it coming.

The Tigers were held hitless for the first six innings and scoreless until the ninth-inning dramatics.

The big rally overshadowed a uber-tight pitchers’ duel between LSU’s Kade Anderson and Tennessee’s Liam Doyle.

“We couldn’t do anything off of Doyle,” Johnson said. “Maybe outside of Rhett Lowder (now with the Cincinnati Reds), that’s the best pitcher that I’ve seen since we’ve been at LSU.”

Doyle stymied the Tigers on just one hit while striking out six in 6 2/3 innings.

“The one part of the plan that we did execute is we just kind of kept competing when we got to two strikes,” Johnson said. “All that it did wa”s it just made their bullpen run two outs longer than ours. And that’s all we needed.”

Anderson struck out 11 for the Tigers in 7 1/3 innings.

Tennessee’s first two runs — one in the sixth, another in the eighth — were set up by wild pitches.

Jacob Mayers (1-0) got the win despite giving up a run in the top of the ninth.

LSU relief ace Zac Cowan pitched two-thirds of the eighth inning, but only threw 13 pitches and will be ready for the rest of the weekend.

That hard act to follow will come Saturday at 7 p.m. with LSU righthander Anthony Eyanson (6-1, 3.52) against the Vols’ Marcus Phillips (2-3, 2.96).