Jay Johnson's take on LSU's series win, upcoming SEC Tournament

LSU ended Saturday with another series win, this time over South Carolina, improving to 19-11 in SEC play heading into the postseason. LSU head coach Jay Johnson met with the media after the win and talked about his team, this season, and what’s ahead. Here’s everything he said.

On the series win and SEC season as a whole…

“Very proud of the team. I think we won seven of the 10 series. I’m not sure how many teams actually did that—I think going into the weekend it was maybe only Texas and Auburn were the other two. Not sure how that changed this weekend, but very proud of that. I mean, it’s hard. That’s what our league is—very difficult. And to be consistent, I thought we dealt with success well. I thought we dealt with adversity well.

Great to get this win today. You know, we’re going to need to finish the weekends out strong as we move forward. I think this was a good exercise. As I say to the players: everything is training for something. Finishing this off—hopefully it’s something we can draw on as we go into postseason play.

You guys are now the three-seed in Hoover officially. Is it nice to get those extra days, starting Friday?

“Oh yeah. I mean, everybody will be happy, the coaches are happy, the players are happy, the players’ girlfriends are happy. And I’m happy too, because it allows us to get some good work in this week. We’ll take tomorrow off. Monday we’ll have some small group work. We’ve got some pitchers that need to throw to live hitters and some guys that need at-bats, so we’ll play a simulated game. Tuesday and Wednesday morning we’ll have more traditional practices. Then we’ll bus over Wednesday afternoon and practice in Hoover on Thursday. That’s the rough schedule.”

On LSU‘s success late in games…

“Yeah, 7th, 8th, 9th. That’s going to be our time this time of year. We had a meeting at the start of the 7th inning—said from here on out, we’re going to dominate the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings on both sides of the ball. Proud of the offense for putting up three runs, one in each of those innings. It’s hard to separate like that. Really proud of the bullpen – Anthony was spectacular. Bill too. Both those guys need to be first-team All-Americans, so make sure we’re promoting that. Also really proud of Mavrick, Cooper, and Chase Shores. We’ve asked a lot of Zac and Casan, so to get out of this with 30 pitches or less for those two and still win the series—that’s a huge win on top of the two out of three.”

What was Cooper doing especially well today?

“Yeah, I thought the at-bat to Jones was awesome. They said he got hit by a pitch. We reviewed it, they didn’t. He stood out there for a while and it was a 3–2 count. So to execute that pitch for a strikeout was the highlight of his outing.

Hollands was taking good swings, left-handed, so we wanted to turn him around. Threw a great changeup. Got the two right-handers out, got Wa out, which was big. He was a key part of their win on Thursday. Cooper did great all the way around. He’s going to be really good. He’s got a chance to be a starter here. He’s got the pitch mix, he’s getting more physical, and he has the makeup for it.

When you visited Anthony on the mound in the second inning, what was the message?

“He’s an elite strike-thrower. We weren’t getting a lot of close pitches—at least from the dugout’s view. Scott, the ump, is going to be the national coordinator of umpires—he’s one of the best, definitely top three.

I just didn’t want Anthony getting caught up in the frustration of not getting calls. I wanted him to stay locked in and keep the inning small. And he did—got out of it with just one run. Scobee got a double off a breaking ball, but we left runners on second and third—that let our offense reset and take the lead the next time through.

And later, he got out of another jam, right?

“Yeah. Executed a pitch. Great play by Michael at third when he picked the hop, great internal clock. Danny with a solid turn, Jared with the stretch. Our defense has been elite. I don’t know where we rank nationally, but we’ve played great defense all year. I don’t think we had an error in the series—maybe one Friday. When we play our brand of baseball, which is strong defense, we’re at our best.”