Jay Johnson praises Michael Braswell, reveals why LSU stuck with him in College World Series

The LSU Tigers capped off their 2025 season with a win in the College World Series. For Michael Braswell, that capped off a four-year college career where he flashed plenty of potential, but struggled offensively during his senior season.

Those offensive struggles led to some calls for head coach Jay Johnson to bench Michael Braswell, but he stuck with his veteran. It worked out too, with the Tigers winning a second national championship in three seasons. It’s also a move that Johnson believes was vital to winning it all, particularly for what he brought to the defensive side of the ball.

“We don’t win the game last night without his defense,” Jay Johnson said. “I mean, we lose the game without his defense last night. I was looking hard at it. Tanner [Reaves] is a good player, too, and he helped us get here, but just on the offensive platoon side it probably would have made more sense to play Tanner against [Cameron] Flukey and [Jacob] Morrison, but with the pressure that Coastal puts on you with the inside game, we just felt like we had to play him. There was a lot of pull-side ground balls against Kade [Woods] throughout the season.”

Michael Braswell hit just .189 for the season with a .309 OBP and a .270 slugging percentage. Those numbers are severely down from 2024, when he slashed for .311/.411/.453 over 64 games. His cold streak late in the season became incredibly difficult to overlook, not recording a hit from May 31st until Game 2 of the College World Series. Fans took note of those struggles, rallying behind Braswell and consistently giving him standing ovations.

While what Michael Braswell brought on defense was extraordinary, the offensive struggles were becoming difficult to ignore. Jay Johnson admitted that coaches even had discussions about making a change, but they ultimately decided to stick with him.

“I just — we have a meeting where we kind of talk through the lineup. That one I put on the board somebody tried to raise their hand,” Johnson said. “But I was like, ‘No, this is what we’re doing tonight.’ And they came back and said, ‘Good decision, Coach.'”

Michael Braswell got a hit and seemed to break out of his slump finally in Game 2 of the College World Series. He’d got 1-2 at the plate and had an RBI. On top of that, he’d add a sacrifice bunt to round out a good performance in the clinching game.

“Today, awesome, sac bunt, I believe, walk, and a base hit,” Johnson said. “And I’m really happy for him because when he came here he didn’t talk about pro baseball. He talked about getting to Omaha. I kind of fist-bumped him the first game when we got here he said, ‘We’re here, let’s win it now.’ He contributed a lot to that.”

Michael Braswell is now a College World Series champion. He wasn’t the largest bat that LSU had along the way to winning it, but he made his contribution to the championship all the same.