College baseball notebook: LSU coach gives ‘major hat tip’ to Summit League’s Omaha after upset
LSU head coach Jay Johnson watches the field during an NCAA baseball game against Tulane, June 2, 2023, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, File)
It was just one game in February, but it will be one players for the Omaha Mavericks will remember for a lifetime.
In the biggest upset of the season so far, Omaha’s Ben Weber, Luke Gainer and Oliver Mabee held an LSU team ranked as high as No. 2 in the polls hitless into the eighth inning and the Mavs hung on for a 5-4 win Saturday in Baton Rouge.
The Mavs (2-5) of the Summit League haven’t posted a winning record since 2019. LSU was by far the highest ranked opponent they’ve knocked off since they became a full-fledged Division I program in 2016.
“It was a big moment for our program even though it’s a regular-season game,” coach Evan Porter said Monday. “I think we’re 12-13 years (since transitioning) into Division I, and we didn’t have a stadium until four years ago. Before that we were playing at a city park and maybe not all the students on campus knew we had a baseball program.”
The victory was especially meaningful for Porter and pitching coach Michael Bradshaw. Porter grew up in Omaha, was a two-time Division II All-America shorstop for the Mavs and still holds the program record for games played (239 from 2005-09). Bradshaw pitched at Nevada when LSU coach Jay Johnson led the Wolf Pack and he was an assistant under Johnson at Arizona.
“Omaha did a good job, man,” Johnson said. “Major hat tip to how they pitched.”
The Mavs’ biggest highlight before Saturday came in 2019 when they won the Summit League and played in an NCAA regional at No. 1 national seed UCLA. They led 1-0 in the fifth inning before losing 5-1.
Porter said the ever-changing college sports model could mean fewer upsets of elite programs by low mid-major teams like his going forward. Revenue sharing with players and third-party name, image and likeness opportunities will create even greater competitive disparity between programs like LSU and Omaha.
The Mavs fund the current maximum of 11.7 scholarships and they have an NIL collective that provides as many opportunities as other similarly situated programs, but it’s miniscule compared with what’s available to players in the SEC.
“Our guys get pumped when we get postgame scraps from the event that was happening at the ballpark,” Porter said.
In the polls
Texas A&M (5-1) remained No. 1 in the D1Baseball.com and Baseball America polls after winning two of three last week.
D1 Baseball had LSU (6-1) at No. 2 and Tennessee (7-0) at No. 3. Baseball America had those two teams flip-flopped.
Lefty goes 10 innings
Rhode Island left-hander Trystan Levesque turned in the nation’s longest outing in nearly three years, pitching 10 shutout innings and striking out nine in the Rams’ 1-0 loss at Oregon on Saturday.
The graduate student threw 119 pitches, scattered three hits and walked two. He retired 17 straight batters between the second and seventh innings. Connor Johnston came on for the 11th, and Oregon scored an unearned run for the walk-off win.
A swing better than Ohtani’s?
Stanford freshman sensation Rintaro Sasaki, who was 7 for 18 with two doubles and eight RBIs against Cal State Fullerton in his first four games, cooled off in weekend games against Washington. Japan’s all-time high school leader in home runs went hitless in the first two games and was 2 for 10 with three walks and four strikeouts over three games. The teams were to play again Monday.
Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani has known Sasaki since Sasaki’s father, Hiroshi, coached him in high school. In an ESPN feature last week, the interviewer told Sasaki that Ohtani told him that Sasaki has the better swing.
Sasaki broke into laughter and said, “No, absolutely not.”
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This version corrects the name of the Omaha pitcher to Ben Weber in the second paragraph.
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