Everything LSU coach Jay Johnson said after the Tigers' national championship

LSU needed just two games to beat Coastal Carolina and claim its eighth national championship.

But the foundation for the memorable title run has been a year — or, in some ways, years — in the making.

Coach Jay Johnson reflected postgame, in an extended press conference, on the Tigers’ performance against the Chanticleers, but also the building of the team, revitalization of the program overall and his relationship with legendary predecessor Skip Bertman.

Here’s everything Johnson said in the media session.

[Click here for more from players Anthony Eyanson, Chase Shores and Chris Stanfield.]

Opening statement…

“I’ll do my best. Unbelievable. I’m so proud right now. It’s not to be taken for granted. Being here two years ago, that was special. Greatest night of my life. This is equal and maybe even tops in some ways. You know, it was probably a year ago today we had 12 players in our program that actually played on the field for us in 2024. Twelve. That’s not a lot. And then, as coach (Skip) Bertman would say, we ended up with some really good fortune. We had to go to work.

“We got some really talented freshmen through the Major League Baseball draft. And in a month’s time, we were able to add Chris (Stanfield), we were able to add Anthony (Eyanson), we were able to add Zac Cowan, Luis Hernandez, Danny Dickinson to those 12 guys, which were the right 12 guys. And not included in those guys is Chase Shores. And you don’t get to this podium and we don’t get to this moment without a lot of things going right over a long period of time.

“Chase Shores was the first real ‘dude‘ high school player that committed to us when I accepted the job. And I think this is appropriate to have these three players (Eyanson, Shores and Stanfield) here. They are exactly what this team was, which is — our motto for the year was ‘Tough and Together.’ And I’ve never seen a team more mentally tough and consistent. I mean, we went through probably the hardest schedule in college baseball, and we had one hiccup — one. I mean, little speed-bump at Auburn, but other than that, they dominated the season and they dominated the schedule. And it is talent, but it was character. I mean, I can’t even picture my life or our program without a Chris Stanfield, a Chase Shores or an Anthony Eyanson.

“We were a little behind on Chris and somehow he had the faith. We hit it off pretty quick and built a pretty strong bond and were able to get him. And then, I’ve mentioned this before with Anthony: There’s one guy a summer in this crazy new world that we’re living in that you know it’s gonna tip the scales for you to have an opportunity to be here and do what we just accomplished, and that was Anthony Eyanson. And then Chase Shores, I’m so proud of him. I mean, was a weekend starter on the 2023 national championship team as a freshman. His last pitch of that season was a 97-mile-an-hour fastball that struck somebody out from Tennessee with (Alex Box Stadium) rocking. And then he had to go through the 18-month recovery rehab and persevered through all of that. And there’s nobody I would’ve rather had finish the game tonight for this second national championship than Chase Shores.

“And I could talk forever and ever about a lot of different things. I would just say these three dudes sum up what the 2025 national championship team was. I love you guys, I will do anything for you for the rest of your life and amazing. You did this. It would not have happened without you. So thank you.”

On progression of the team throughout the year, particularly offensively and Eyanson…

“Yeah, he’s all right. I think it was unique. It was a new team, but I felt like I developed a really good feel for it quickly, and it was a style of player that fit maybe the totality of my career a little bit better than what we had last year. I mean, we sent 13 dudes to pro baseball after winning the 2023 championship, and it’s just hard to overcome when you lose that talent. But it just, it clicked. Chris is a very dynamic player, and he didn’t have a great season at Auburn the year before, but I liked him. I liked how competitive he was. I liked the athlete. And we felt like we could help him get better. He did. Danny, he was probably the star guy that we brought in, and the person just far exceeds the player. I mean, he’s so competitive. He’s been playing with a broken hand since the first play of the NCAA Tournament. Listen to what I just said. He broke his hamate bone in the game he hit two homers in the first game of the NCAA Tournament and just got five hits in Omaha and we went, like, 10-1. I mean, if that is not toughness, I don’t know what is. So massive hats off.

“And then guys got better. Steven Milam got better, especially down the stretch. Jake Brown got better. Jared Jones got better. And that’s what happens. I mean, we can’t promise that we’re gonna win two titles in three years and you’re gonna get to play in Omaha, especially going through the SEC. But I do promise them that they will be better players. And nobody does a better job of that than our staff. And going off of Michael’s question, if you’re a pitcher and you don’t wanna come here right now, you’re out to lunch. I mean, you’re just not thinking clearly, because that’s three dudes that just pitched in this series that are all gonna be in the Major Leagues within 18 months. And the offensive side, that’s kinda my baby, and I take pride in it. It’s just a nonstop effort as far as player development.

“And then as far as with Anthony, he kind of tricked me a little bit in the fall, but now I get it. Like, he knew he was good, and he was kind of pacing himself for this run. And we don’t win the championship without him. And it got maybe overshadowed a little bit by Kade, but he won 12 games, too. And that’s a lot in today’s college baseball. Wins the first game of the NCAA Tournament, closes out the Regional final, grinds out a win in the Super, gets us out to a good start here against UCLA and then wins the national championship game. And I could tell pretty quick today it was gonna go good for him. And he deserved to be on the mound for the winner today.”

On building this team and the plan for finding the right guys…

“I knew we had really good players coming back. It just wasn’t a lot of volume. You know, (Shores) was gonna get back and be healthy and that was gonna be a huge shot in the arm of the pitching staff. We might’ve been here three years in a row if he had been healthy, you know, and never had gotten hurt. I really believe that would’ve been possible if you add him to what we had last year in Luke Holman and Gage Jump. But two years in a row: In ’23 we had 13 players drafted — that’s an SEC record, not an LSU record, an SEC record. Last year I believe we had eight pitchers drafted — another SEC record. That’s a lot to replace over a two-year period, and maybe that’s why I’m just so proud of this thing. I mean, this is a completely different team. As far as putting it together, I just felt like we were a little short last year, and it wasn’t by much. It wasn’t by much. But it was just a little short of being able to win any type of game and match up. We didn’t quite matchup the way we needed to against — you know, Tennessee won it last year — against them or against best teams in the country. But it wasn’t by much.

“And I just went and did what I did to give us the opportunity to do this. And it’s not like you’re not trying every day of your life. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Like it’s kind of a funny story now, but Nate Sneed who’s, like, the best reliever in college baseball the last two years — we eliminated Tennessee (in 2023), and he went on a visit to Tennessee while we were playing Florida for the championship. He was supposed to come on a visit a couple days later. He never came. He committed to Tennessee. Like, that’s how it goes. I can’t control being in the Finals two of the last three years and losing some recruiting days. It’s just wild how it goes.

“But Chris, Danny, Zac Cowan — a little bit of luck. We’re playing Wofford, and I’m scouting Zac Cowan, going, like, ‘How did we land on this dude? This is who we’re gonna face in the first game of the Regionals.’ And luckily they didn’t pitch him, because he had thrown like 800 pitches in the conference tournament. But he goes in the (transfer) portal, and it’s like, ‘I’m not asking (pitching coach) Nate (Yeskie). I’m not asking (director of analytics and player development) Jamie (Tutko). I’m not asking anybody. This dude is coming to LSU.’ And we got him. And 5 1/3 against Arkansas, who’s the most talented team in the country this year. And he’s one of the best, first-team All-SEC reliever. We just hit on the right players that were 1,000% the right people. And you have to have — you can’t do it, you can’t do that (championship) without all of that. And we feel very lucky and fortunate that these dudes picked us. And what a season.”

On the development of Kade Anderson, Eyanson, Shores and pitchers under Yeskie…

“Yeah, he’s amazing. Second year in Arizona, we made it to Omaha. Second year here at LSU, we win the national championship. So I mentioned why pitchers should want to come here. Oregon State, Arizona, Texas A&M, LSU. So all you other college baseball historians, find me another pitching coach that’s gone to Omaha with four different programs. Now double national championship with Oregon State and LSU and Big Leaguers and All-Americans and all of that. Nate is the best pitching coach in college baseball. And we’ve led the country in strikeouts two years in a row. I mean, I think it really speaks for itself. And I’m proud of him. He’s a friend, and he’s loyal, hard-working, and he’s really good at what he does. And if you’re a pitcher out there, high school or portal, you should want to come pitch here, largely because of Nate Yeskie and then Jamie Tutko, who’s our director of pitching development and analytics and has helped take this thing to a new level as well. So we’ve got it all. We’ve got it all. And I’m really proud of that side of the ball. We had to elevate the talent in the LSU Baseball program on the mound when I got here, and we have, and we’ve executed on developing them as good as I ever could have dreamed of or imagined.”

Being thanked for staying and taking extra questions…

“We can stay here all night. We just won the national championship.”

On Michael Braswell’s performance and him receiving a standing applause at the plate…

“Well, we don’t win the game last night without his defense. I mean, we lose the game without his defense last night. And I was looking hard at it. Tanner (Reaves) is a good player, too, and he helped us get here. And just the offensive platoon side, it probably would’ve made more sense to play Tanner against Flukey and Morrison. But just the pressure that Coastal puts on you with the inside game, we felt like we had to play him. And there was a lot of pull-side groundballs against Kade throughout the season. So we have a meeting where we kind of talk through the lineup, and that one I just put on the board. And someone tried to raise their hand, and I said, ‘No, like, this is what we’re doing tonight.’ And then they came back and said, ‘Good decision, coach.’ And then today, awesome. Sac bunt, I believe, a walk and a base hit. 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. And then I kinda fist-bumped him the first game when we got here, and he was like, ‘Well, we’re here. Let’s win it now.’ And he contributed a lot to that.”

On continued trust and confidence in Shores to get back to this point…

“The talent is uncoachable. I mean, it’s 99, 100 (miles an hour). It’s what they look like on TV at Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, Petco Park — that’s where he’ll spend his life, because he’s got that ability. He just, he missed a lot of development time. Like I threw him right in the rotation on, again, one of the best teams in college baseball history because I wanted to get mileage on his tires to get that talent to become the skill that we’re all seeing now. And then he got hurt unfortunately and missed all that time. And then this year, to be honest, he didn’t pitch great going into the season in our scrimmages and all that type of stuff. But I felt like we had a good enough offense, we had a good enough supporting pieces, we decided to start him, because I wanted him to get that experience.

“And he had some success, and he had some failures. But then I felt like we got the development time in, and then we put him in a role that there’s nobody better for that role. And then he had a couple speed bumps. He was pretty good. He had a couple speed bumps, but he had a bad outing in the Regionals the game we lost to Little Rock. And the response from that to what we saw against West Virginia and then the four games here, man. It meant a lot to see him on the mound. Because it just doesn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen last summer. I mean, that’s like October of 2021 where he chose to come to LSU. And because of the injury it took him a long time to get to this point, but it was well worth it.”

On navigating consistent Coastal Carolina base-runners in Finals series…

“I’m looking at the (Game 2) stat sheet. We only walked one. We had the one hit-by-pitch. And we laid out a pretty clear plan of what we needed to do to beat this team, who congratulations to coach (Kevin) Schnall and Coastal — to win 26 games in a row is insane. We won 17 in a row at one point this year. It didn’t feel like we lost for, like, two months. Twenty-six is ridiculous. And it took the best team in the country to beat them. LSU is the best team in the country this year. Not just the national champion. But Anthony, that’s what he does. They were talking about how we map out the game. And for him, it was simple: Close in the first inning. Like if he gets through the first inning, he’s usually special. So it was ‘you’re the closer in the first inning, and then do what you do,’ which is get better as the game goes along, and there is nobody better in baseball — in baseball — with runners on base than Anthony Eyanson. And I just didn’t feel like we ever allowed them to have momentum in two games. It’s like this: It’s like in football, they were in third-and-8 the whole time, because we did a good job keeping the leadoff guy on base, and when we got a base-runner on, we immediately got the next out.”

On describing the feeling of winning at the highest level…

“This was different. I mean, the first one was the first one. And I felt like — in coming here to LSU, I felt like I could help that group of players in the second year that we were here do that. And we needed to add (Paul) Skenes, (Tommy) White, those guys, but I felt like I could help Tre Morgan be a better player and Jordan Thompson be a better player, so that was kinda that. This was just I’m so proud of how this team went about their business, because again these guys are really smart and they know the pro prospects that some of these guys are. I think I might’ve even called (D1 Baseball’s) Kendall (Rogers) when he rated us, like, No. 3 in the preseason, or No. 4, like, ‘Man, are you sure? That seems pretty high.’ Just because you didn’t know. It was just so many new pieces. But they performed like national champions every single day at this.

“We had a great fall, and they did what they needed to do in December. We had a great lead-up to the season, the four weeks leading up to the season, and then great in the nonconference. I mean, our league is just so tough, I mean, going 19-11 is, like, amazing, you know what I mean. And then tournament time’s our time. Tournament time’s our time. And they were amazing in the NCAA Tournament.”

On seeing Coastal coach Kevin Schnall ejected in the first inning…

“Yeah, that’s my friend, too, and somebody I have great respect for. And I didn’t have any reaction, because I was so locked into what we needed to do in the game. And I was ejected for arguing balls and strikes this year, and they don’t like that when you argue balls and strikes. And I’m not sure really what happened. I saw the first-base coach arguing, and then he came out. And I don’t know what was said. I don’t want to get into all of that. Just a tough situation, but I literally moved past it immediately, because I needed to be locked in to what our players needed from our coaching staff.”

On common threat between the two championship teams despite roster turnover…

“Character — 100% character. And it just manifests itself in different ways. You know, the first one was real trust and buy-in and, hey, man, I’m some dude from California, and that probably wasn’t going to work in Louisiana unless the players trusted what we were gonna do. And they did, and we made it happen in two years. And then this one, I think that happened a little quicker, because of what we had done developing guys for pro baseball. I mean, Grant Taylor and Paul Gervase just got called up here in the last two weeks, and Tre (Morgan) is on the way, and Jacob Berry’s close. I mean, that’s what they want to do, and there’s nobody better at helping guys do that than the coaching staff at LSU. So these guys, I think it was more about we just hit on exactly what we needed from the person and the player standpoint. There was no mistakes. Like a guy like Eddie Yamin, he didn’t play one play all year. In the dugout, in the bullpen, phenomenal, and this was like an all-conference player at another school. Phenomenal. So, we just got the right guys on the bus.”

On his relationship with Skip Bertman…

“First off, the local people have probably heard me say this, but literally the best part of me being the head coach at LSU has been the relationship that I have with coach Bertman. Like, far and away, the best part of being the coach at LSU is the relationship that I have with coach Bertman. He wouldn’t argue with me. I would say that the two championships are up there, tied for first with that, and I think he’d be OK with that. But he came into the coaches’ locker room today. And I knew he was coming, but it was, like, it still caught me off-guard for a second. And I was, like, ‘Oh, we’re winning today. Like, the man with the magic is in the house.’ And then he started talking like what we were gonna do for the celebration, and I was like, ‘Coach, this is a pretty good team that hadn’t lost in two months, we’ve gotta try to figure out to beat.’ But he’s the best, and I think it’s so awesome that he’s here and he got to share in this championship.'”