By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports

BATON ROUGE – Former LSU head baseball coach Skip Bertman passed his adage of shrugging off occasional non-conference losses to Paul Mainieri, one of his successors.

But current Tigers’ coach Jay Johnson doesn’t subscribe to such an approach.

Especially not this season when LSU (28-17, 7-14 SEC), by winning 4 of its last 6 conference games after a 3-12 start in the league, is scrounging for every positive morsel to stick on a resume to rally for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid.

It’s why prospective home wins over Grambling (18-22) tonight in Alex Box Stadium and Northwestern State (18-26) next Tuesday in the last two non-conference games of the regular season are suddenly huge.

“Tuesday is a must-win game, there’s no question about that,” Johnson said of playing Grambling. “If we can win those two (Grambling and NSU), then we’ll be 23 and 3 outside the league. I don’t know that there’s five teams in the country that can say that.”

There probably hasn’t been a defending national champion from the SEC that lost its first five conference series the following season and rallied down the stretch to steal an at-large NCAA tourney invite.

Three weeks ago, LSU had just about written its obituary for the 2024 season after being swept at Tennessee, the fourth of five SEC teams ranked nationally in the top 6 to hammer the Tigers.

But by finally playing and winning series over league bottom-feeders Missouri and Auburn the last two weekends, LSU’s NCAA Tournament chances now have a faint heartbeat.

“When it could have been easy to pack things in, I’ve watched a lot of guys show up to the ballpark every day, still put in work and still grow and still compete,” LSU grad student catcher Alex Milazzo said. “That’s what I’m most proud of right now.”

While the Tigers’ offense has hit a collective .293 in taking 2 of 3 games (12-1, 7-8, 6-2) at Missouri and 2 of 3 (5-0, 3-2, 5-7) at home vs. Auburn, it still averaged just 6.3 runs and batted .157 (3 of 19) with runners in scoring position.

What has finally come alive for LSU is what Johnson has been waiting on since league play started in March.

“Why we’re winning right now is the pitching staff,” Johnson said.

In their last two league series, 14 Tigers’ pitchers have combined for a 3.18 earned run average with 11 strikeouts and 2.2 walks per game in 51 innings.

Finally, against Auburn, the starting pitching moons aligned in Game 1 and Game 2.

UCLA transfer Gage Jump threw 7 scoreless innings in the series-opening win, allowing 2 hits. Alabama transfer Luke Holman followed in Game 2 by giving up 2 runs (1 earned) and 2 hits in 6.2 innings.

“This is the first weekend where Luke and Gage pitched really well together, and we won the series,” Johnson said. “Those were the two best pitchers in the transfer portal.”

Jump, who missed all of last season at UCLA rehabbing from Tommy John arm surgery, has been a terror the last two weekends as a Game 1 starter after his first five starts (3 as a Game 2 starter and one each as a Game 1 and a Game 3 starter) were painful learning lessons.

Against Mississippi State, Florida, Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Tennessee, Jump had a combined 7.66 ERA while striking out 22 and walking 13 in 22.1 innings.

In his last two starts vs. Missouri and Auburn, his combined ERA was 0.64 in a pair of 7-inning appearances. He allowed 5 hits and 1 earned run with a 20 to 1 strikeout to walks ratio.

“I always want to learn things, so the more I pitch the better I am,” Jump said. “Right now, it’s learning hitters’ swings, especially in the at-bats. The past couple of games I read a swing and I decided on a pitch I wanted to go with.”

LSU has a chance to make a huge statement to the NCAA tourney selection committee this weekend when the Tigers host No. 1 ranked Texas A&M (38-6, 15-6) starting Friday night.

“I feel like the mentality with this team is we’re right there,” said LSU outfielder Josh Pearson, who had the game-winning walk-off single in a 3-2 Game 2 win over Auburn. “We know how we can play and we know we haven’t been playing how we can. We know we just got to get over the hump and then we’ll be there.”

Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com