BATON ROUGE, La. — With two weeks left in the regular season, LSU is scrambling to avoid becoming the third straight defending national champion to miss the NCAA Tournament.
LSU also could help itself with a good showing in the SEC Tournament. The Tigers are tied with Mississippi for the 12th and final spot in the conference tournament, two games ahead of Missouri.
“We’re still in the fight for a postseason bid,” coach Jay Johnson said, "and we’ve really improved over the last month. We’ve given ourselves a chance. In the last few weeks, we’ve put ourselves into the best position we possibly could to play postseason baseball. We’re just going to have to keep fighting.”
LSU understandably has struggled to replace the leadership, and performances, of pitcher Paul Skenes and center fielder Dylan Crews – the top two picks in the 2023 Major League Baseball amateur draft.
The Tigers weren't expected to struggle as much as they have, though. They had bad nonconference losses to Stony Brook and Southern, and they lost five straight SEC series before winning two against the bottom teams in the league, Missouri and Auburn.
A pair of 6-4 victories locked up the series win over Texas A&M, which won Sunday's game 14-4.
Next up for the Tigers is a trip to Alabama (29-18, 10-14) and then a home series against Mississippi (25-22, 9-15).
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