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All options are available to Jay Johnson in LSU's regional

On3 imageby: Matthew Brune05/28/25MatthewBrune_
Kade Anderson LSU
Kade Anderson LSU

Jay Johnson found out who was coming to LSU’s regional at the same time as the rest of us. The No. 6 overall seed, the Tigers will host Dallas Baptist, Rhode island, and Little Rock over the weekend looking for a chance to get to the Super Regional round.

The persisting question for Johnson remains — who will start on the mound in game one against Little Rock at 2 p.m. on Friday? In short, don’t expect to hear anything from LSU’s head coach ahead of time.

“I just found out who we’re playing, so I haven’t looked at any of the teams yet. But two of them won their conference tournaments, and we know DBU is a great program—I believe they won the regular season title in Conference USA. So, three championship-caliber teams.

We’ll look at that and decide what we’re going to do. Don’t ask me again this week—we won’t announce a starter for Friday. Everybody who knows me knows that. Jaden’s a possibility too, but we won’t announce a starter until Friday.”

The discussion between starting Anderson and Eyanson is a luxury for Johnson, as both are all-conference caliber arms who have routinely won the Tigers games this season. Jaden Noot has also become someone Johnson trusts late in the season.

The hope for LSU is a clean weekend where the starting pitching carries them through the regional, but as we know baseball doesn’t always go how you plan. That’s why Johnson is emphatic about having options and knowing what’s available as his team enters the most important time of the year.

Nearly a week ago, Jay Johnson chose to pitch both of his star arms in Anderson and Eyanson in a game against Texas A&M in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament. The result was a win, but it sidelined both of his top pitchers for the remainder of the tournament. LSU would lose the next game to Ole Miss in the semifinals on Saturday and quickly turned its attention to the postseason.

Johnson was setting up for this exact situation, to have both pitchers available to start game one of the regional round.

“Just looking at what we’re trying to do as a team, we have asked a lot out of those two guys, and they are the reason that we are sitting here and not the reason we’re not getting on an airplane to go play from this point forward,” Johnson said. This was a good week to kinda minimize what we asked of them and their load to get them fresher and better for next week. That was the first thing. The second thing was we now have the option to do whatever we want next Friday. When you don’t know who your opponent is, you wanna have the option to choose. And I have that option because I have two pitchers as good as that.

“Number three, I wanted to play more than one game here. The only way you get better as a team is to play, and all that’s left is teams that are capable of going to Omaha and winning the national championship. So what an opportunity for us to get better this week. The next thing is we’re gonna need more than those two guys. So now this is gonna thrust a few guys into pitching well against teams that are capable of winning the national championship, which will thus make us better as we move forward.”

LSU is buzzing as this year’s team looks poised to get back to Omaha after falling short last season. With the talented starting pitching and a confidence in The Box that elevates their bats, the Tigers know what’s ahead.

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