LSU cruises past Florida in Game 1, wins 6-1
BATON ROUGE, La. – LSU right-hander Luke Holman fired a career-high 13 strikeouts in six innings Friday night, as the fourth-ranked Tigers posted a 6-1 over No. 6 Florida in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field.
LSU improved to 19-4 overall, 2-2 in the SEC, while Florida dropped to 12-9 overall, 2-2 in conference play.
The teams meet in Game 2 of the series at 6 p.m. CT Saturday in a contest that will be broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network and streamed on SEC Network +.
Holman (5-1) limited the Gators to one run on one hit in six innings with three walks and 13 strikeouts, surpassing his former career best of 12 strikeouts recorded against Texas on March 1.
Left-hander Griffin Herring earned his second save of the season for the Tigers, working the final 3.0 scoreless innings and yielding just three hits with no walks and three strikeouts.
“A really good performance by Luke and by Griffin,” said LSU coach Jay Johnson. “The common denominator was they filled up the strike zone. Luke got 13 of his 18 outs with strikeouts by just flooding the zone, and Griffin was great getting ahead in the count. When he needed to make a pitch to tip the count in our favor, he did.”
LSU leftfielder Mac Bingham drove in two runs from the lead-off spot in the Tigers’ order, and rightfielder Josh Pearson, designated hitter Ethan Frey, shortstop Michael Braswell III and centerfielder Paxton Kling each contributed one RBI.
Florida starting pitcher Cade Fisher (2-2) was charged with the loss, as he surrendered five runs on five hits in 5.0 innings with two walks and five strikeouts.
“Fisher is a good pitcher, we saw him twice in Omaha last year,” Johnson said. “You have to be very disciplined, because he has a good slider and locates his fastball really well at the bottom of the zone. I thought we took really good at-bats, and it was great to see.
“I like those games where you put up six runs against a good team without needing a home run. We had some clutch hitting and took advantage of some free bases; just a really good performance by our team offensively.”
The Tigers grabbed a 2-0 lead in the first against Fisher when both Pearson and Frey delivered two-out RBI singles.
Rightfielder Ty Evans homered for Florida in the fourth to narrow the gap to 2-1, but LSU struck for three runs in the sixth as Braswell III drew a bases-loaded walk, Kling lifted a sacrifice fly and Bingham smacked an RBI single.
Bingham’s RBI double in the eighth extended the Tigers’ lead to 6-1.
LSU release.
