LSU Muscles Its Way Past Texas Southern

Although no one thought it was particularly funny, it was a comedy of errors at Alex Box Stadium Friday afternoon.

LSU gave up six runs on an uncharacteristic five errors, but the offense did its job as the Tigers defeated Texas Southern 15-7 in their first round game of the Baton Rouge Regional.

Texas Southern scored twice in the first inning and one in the second as LSU made three errors in the first two frames.  An error on Nick Coomes made one of the runs unearned in the first, while errors by Josh Smith and Zach Watson helped TSU score another in the second frame.

But Watson atoned with a three run homer following a Michael Papierski RBI single to give LSU a 4-3 lead after two.  Cole Freeman led off the third with a triple and scored on a Greg Deichmann single to give LSU a two run lead.

But Kramer Robertson made a pair of errors in the fifth inning and Texas Southern parlayed those miscues plus three walks and a couple of hits in a four run fifth that finished LSU starter Jared Poche and put TSU back in front, 7-5.  Poche gave up seven runs, but only one earned, in 4.2 innings.

But the Tigers came right back in the bottom of the inning, scoring four times on RBI singles by Coomes and Zach Smith and sacrifice flies by Beau Jordan and Papierski to go up 9-7 and put the game away in the seventh as Papierski hit a two run bomb and Watson followed with his second homer of the day to make it 12-7.  LSU added another run later in the inning on an RBI single by Antoine Duplantis and scored twice more in the eighth.

Five different Tigers had two hits each.  Papierski and Watson each drove in four runs.

Caleb Gilbert pitched 2.2 innings of two hit ball in relief of Poche to get the win.  He didn't walk a batter and struck out six as the Tigers' pitching staff combined for 16 strikeouts.

LSU will now face the winner of Rice-Southeastern La. in the winners bracket game tomorrow night.