LSU GAVE THIS GAME AWAY?! Defensive MELTDOWN Hands Ole Miss Game 1 in Oxford

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It works with whatever podcast app you already use, same episodes every day, just no ads. There's also a member's only group chat for fans of your team, plus a lot more. You can check it out by tapping the Everydayer Club link in the show notes. Sloppy Play Dooms, the Tigers as LSU drops game one at Ole Miss. We've got your recap. It's locked on LSU. Here we go. You are locked on LSU, your daily podcast on the LSU Tigers. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Okay. Let's get it. It is locked on LSU, your team every day. I'm your host, Matt Moscona. Thanks for being here with us. LSU drops game one at Ole Miss, six to three, and it was a sloppy, sloppy, sloppy eighth inning. That was LSU's undoing. We're going to recap it here. So thanks for hanging out with us. If you are an Everydayer, you are familiar with this refrain. Looking for my notes from, I can't find it. Looking for my notes from LSU's game against Bethune Cookman on Tuesday. And I told you that in the seventh inning of that game, if you were here and shout out to the Everydayers, that ultimately games like that would be LSU's, this team's undoing. Whenever the season ends, however it would come, it would come at the hands of what happened in that very sloppy seventh inning on Tuesday night against Bethune Cookman. It came in inning later on Friday night at Ole Miss. Let's just start right there with the eighth inning. And then we'll go into the entire ball game so we can recap this atrocity and get past it and move on to what's next. But the bottom line is this is just not a very good baseball team. And there's a lot of baseball still to play, as we all well know at this point. And they view baseball as you can come back tomorrow and win a game. And then it's even, and you go into a rubber match. But ultimately, you just realize time and again, these are the types of things that when this season ends, it's what's going to cost this team. So just start right there in the eighth inning with what ultimately was this team's undoing in this ball game. Not only defensively in the bottom of the eighth, but you look at the top of the eighth, beautiful at bat by Mason Braun, who got the leadoff single. And then leaning off of first, leaning towards second, ultimately gets picked off at first base. So in a tie ball game, you've got the, after Cowan came in in the seventh, got Ole Miss quietly in order, you're pitching it completely stymied Ole Miss since the leadoff homer in the bottom of the second, you're now in the top of the eighth, you get that leadoff single and Braun gets picked off and then you go strike out, strike out. And then in the bottom of the eighth, the entire thing just completely unraveled and Ole Miss hit two balls out of the infield. And one of them was a 200 foot pop-up that scored a run. That is just an atrocity for a college baseball team. And I've said this a million times, if you're going to sacrifice defense for offense, then you've got to be able to hit. And this team just doesn't hit enough. I want to hat tip Hunter Elliott, who I thought pitched very well in this ball game, but LSU just blew so many opportunities. So if you're going to be a team that sacrificed is defense, that sacrifices defense for offense, you can't put up three runs on nine hits and leave eight on base and expect to win a road game in the southeastern conference. That's the bottom line. So Bissetta leads off the eighth. He hits the, the grounder to second base and he singles. Okay. It's actually on the left side. Your second baseman was playing over there because you were shifted. Other than Udermark hits the ground ball to the left side. Klaus is in there. He takes his foot off the bag on the relay, doesn't get the, the out at second, wasn't going to get the out at first to begin with. You went from a potential ground ball double play to not even getting the fielder's choice out at second. So now you've got two on with nobody out. Furnace against the shift gets an infield single hits it to the left side. Again, they talked about on the broadcast, why you continue to shift against furnace. He's one guy who shows he can control the bat to all fields, but whatever. So now the bases are loaded and then they hit the ball in the corner to right field. It was Federico single down the line. They only score one run boneheaded play by Federico who took the big turn at first and ultimately gave LSU a run there. So only one runs in. It's not out of the question. So you've got at this point, second and third with second and third with one out and they safety squeeze again, the, the ability to get a blunt down, which LSU couldn't do with Dardar in the fourth, which we'll talk about. They get a run home five to three again, the only ball that's left the infield is Federico's long single and then they hit a sack fly, which it was, it was, um, which scored furnace from third. It was Randall who hit the sack fly 200 feet. I mean, furnace can't run, but he knew Stanfield's out there and Stanfield doesn't have a great arm. And so they scored. And so now you're down six, three. And they did this on one base hit that left the infield, just an atrocity. It's just, it's just a, it's just a defensive atrocity. It is, it is puke defense watching this team right now. There's not any good. They're not any good defensively. And you can keep trying and look, Klaus was in there as a defensive replacement and can't get his foot on the bag as a defensive replacement on the fielders choice on the ball where he was ranging to his furnace who's ranging to his right. He can't get to the ball and make an accurate throw pulled, uh, pulled Braun off the bag. I mean, that's your defensive replacement. So this is the thing that is going to be this team's undoing. There's times where they hit the ball. And when they do, it looks like it did on Sunday and LSU puts up 16 runs, a 10 run ending and extras. And that's really fun to watch. And there's times when it's this, when you don't consistently take advantage of your opportunities offensively and your defense is no good and can't back up a really good pitching performance. So we'll go through our takeaways here. Um, but the eighth was just a total disaster for LSU. And this game started off really well for LSU. I mean, Stanfield walks to start the game. They commit a throwing error on the pitcher on a pickoff attempt. You got a runner on second with nobody eight out and Jake Brown clubs a Homer. You're up to nothing. You're feeling great. Then you get a single. So after the Homer, I mean, your first three guys have reached and you're feeling great about this after Aaron Beatty's single, um, on the ground ball to short. And then you go fly out, strike out, Braun singles, beautiful piece of hitting by Braun. We need to talk about him because he was, he was one of the positives in this game, even though he got picked off at first base. But then after that Aaron Beatty gets picked off at third base. It's one of the, the, the awful storylines of this game. Not, we could talk about the eighth inning and how awful that was for LSU, both Braun getting picked off in a tie ball game when he had a leadoff single and then all the atrocity that we just saw in the talk about the bottom of the eighth, but then look at, look at everything else that unfolded. You had Aaron Beatty getting thrown out at third base venturing too far off the back in the bottom of the first. Serna can't catch a fastball. He can't catch a fastball. I mean, it was a fastball strike thrown by case in Evans. It pops out of his mitt and he doesn't have the awareness to hustle to the baseball. He starts to go to the ball realizes, Oh, if I leave home, nobody's covering. And so Evans tries to charge by that time it's too late in the run scores. Like you gave him a frigging run without the benefit of a base hit right there. Aaron Beatty in the third inning, you waste a runner at second base with nobody out. You got a leadoff single, then an error on the throw, um, which put the runner at second base with nobody out. And then you go double fly out ground out. You just waste, sorry, Aaron Beatty that was in the first thing. You just waste the top of the third. Um, in the eighth brawn getting thrown out like we just talked about after the leadoff single in the fourth inning, you've got right there first and third with one out and you don't score a run. You go strike out, strike out to end the inning with a runner at third. Darar can't get the frigging bunt down to try to score a run. I mean, this is elementary baseball and you have major college baseball players who can't execute simple plays. Like it's so sloppy. How about just thought of the eighth with Klaus off the base at second when you're trying to execute a fielder's choice at that point, you'd have a runner on first with one out. And instead you've got first and second, but nobody out in the whole thing snowball. God bless that. Cowan, you deserve much better than the fate that he got in this situation. So just an awful, awful, awful, awful performance all the way around a game that is so winnable because you had a good performance by case of Evans and Zach Cowan. They were good enough to win the ball game tonight and you didn't because you're just not a good enough team. So it's so disappointing. Man, when you have an opportunity to win an SEC game on the road and you just, just gag it away. And that's what this was for LSU. I'd love to tip my cap to Ole Miss, but it's, it's, it's different. In the first inning, and we talked about this leading up to the game, Ole Miss as a team is hitting 250, 252 as a team. They don't string together hits. They rely on the long ball. That's, they rely on home runs. You don't even take my word for it. We had Chase Parham on the show, Kendall Rogers. You heard the broadcast with Richard Cross on it. Talking about this, it's, they're not a good offensive team. They don't string together hits. So if they're going to get four singles in an inning, God bless you. Like throw the ball over the plate, don't give it to them. But it's, so they did in that first inning, they had four singles in the first inning and Evans still struck out the side, but it was the error by CERN. I'm not catching the freaking ball is what got that second run home. So, and, and Evans needed more than 30 pitches, but then he settled into the ball game. So they had a solo homer in the top of the second to go up three to two. After that, my goodness, Evans ends up recording nine straight outs until he hit a batter with one out in the bottom of the six and then he went strike out, ground out. Like Evans deserve a much better fate. Cowan deserved a much better fate. LSU's just not good enough. And so they're going to, they're going to vex us, man. I mean, there's going to be days they could go out tomorrow and win. And I want to talk about more in this game and I want to preview tomorrow. And they, there's, they're, they can go out tomorrow and win the game. They're certainly capable behind William Schmidt of winning a game. It's just, you know, the inevitable fate of this team is going to come. It's going to be something like what we saw in the eighth inning on Friday night, the seventh inning Tuesday against Bethune cooking. And it's going to be this awful gag worthy inning where defensively they look like they've never played baseball before. And that's what it was in a key spot when you had a very winnable game on the road in the SEC. Let me knock out a quick break. We'll come back. There were some things in this game that I liked. I want to talk about, we'll get into that reaction and we'll, we'll preview game two on, on Saturday. It's locked in LSU, your team every day. This is moving the game forward by Mazda for those who know the score never tells the whole story. I don't know what to do in this game to tell you moving the game forward. How about, how about Mason Braun who had three hits? I thought that was good. Freshman got the start on the road and conference play at first base at two singles, the opposite way. Had another single in the eighth course, got picked off at first base, but Mason Braun, offensively, I thought was really good. There's more to these players than the highlights. 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The premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. Just head to indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on locked on LSU indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire. This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. All right. There were some things that I did like in the game. I thought Kasein Evans was really good. He deserved a better fate than he got. A final line for Evans is he went six innings for the Tigers, gave up three runs on five hits. He struck out nine and walked just two. He hit one batter. Again, that hit batsman was in the bottom of the six and that was the AB that broke a streak of nine consecutive outs. So remember, I told you he gave up four singles in the first inning in the bottom of the first. After that single, he allowed one more hit the rest of the way. It was the solo homer in the bottom of the second. After that solo homer, he did not allow another hit. The only base runner he allowed was the hit by pitch in the bottom of the sixth. So I thought for, don't forget me, he walked it. He did allow another hit. He walked the guy in the third and that was it. He walked the guy in the third and then the, because he had a walk in the first. He walked the guy in the third and then had the hit by pitch in the sixth. But I thought Kasein Evans was plenty good enough. You get your starter on a Friday night to give you six innings of three run ball. And doesn't allow a run after the second inning. I think that's, that's plenty good enough to win on a Friday night. If your offense shows up, they just didn't. I will give a hat tip tonight to Hunter Elliott. I thought Hunter Elliott was really good too. He went six innings, two runs on eight hits, struck out eight, walked one, did not hit a batter. Very similar line to Evans. And Elliott is one of those guys that if you're a college baseball fan, whether you love Ole Miss or hate Ole Miss, Hunter Elliott is one of those guys that you can respect. As a true freshman, he was a great prospect, if you recall. He was one of the reasons he and Dylan Delusha that paced Ole Miss to the national championship. And he was a dynamite lefty. And as a sophomore, he ended up having the UCL injury at the Tommy John. Don't even think yet Tommy John, I think he had the sleeve, but either way, because they tried to get him back quicker. It didn't work. He ended up having the Tommy John cost him two years and he just never regained his velocity. I mean, you see it, he's a upper eighties, low nineties fastball guy, but he, he's an incredible pitcher. You know, a guy in his fifth year of college baseball, he just knows how to pitch. And there's certainly a beauty and simplicity of filling up the zone and knowing how to pitch to hitters and executing a game plan. And I thought Hunter Elliott did that tonight. It's, it's a bummer for LSU because Elliott's a guy because he, he relies on the change up but because he doesn't throw it for a strike, if you spit on the change up, you can get his pitch count out up and he's a guy that really hasn't been able to extend much beyond the fourth or fifth. Well, in this game, he got Ole Miss through six and Ole Miss has a very thin bullpen. And what you really needed in this ball game was to have, have to have Ole Miss rely on their bullpen, but Elliott ended up getting them through six. So that's disappointing. Now waters didn't record it out. He walked to hitters, hooks came in and got the final nine outs for, for Ole Miss. He threw 48 pitches. So hooks is probably done for the weekend, but you would have really liked to have to have them extend a little deeper. So Hunter Elliott did, did his job. So had tipped to Hunter Elliott. I thought Braun was a bright spot in this ball game. Despite the fact that he got thrown out, get picked off at first base after the single to lead off the eighth. You know, we've talked a lot about what do you do at first base. And to be very honest, we were looking at on, on after further review today, Brian Terrio and I were looking at the starting lineup when it was posted. I was a little surprised to see Braun, not because I don't think Braun's capable. We've talked about that a bunch of been calling for Braun to play at first. And it was just surprising because Elliott as a lefty, I thought that Jay might try to load up the lineup with righties tonight and probably have Yaman somewhere in there with Aaron Bede and Serna. What they did was they caught Serna, DH, Aaron Bede. And I thought maybe they'd put Yaman at first, but they went with Braun and it proved to be the right decision. A bronze first two hits were both to the left center field gap. He went single double in this first two at bats. And then he had a dead pole single in the eighth against, against hooks. So he got all three hits against two left-handed pitchers. So I thought a really encouraging performance by Braun. And the more Braun keeps performing like that, the harder it's going to be for Zach York to find his way back in the lineup. Hey, you know, I mean, I'm sure Jay Johnson said this week that York's not done playing and he'll, he'll still have A Bs and opportunities. I'm sure that will happen. But if Mason Braun goes out there starting on the road in conference play in that environment, basing the guy like Hunter Elliott and then hooks and delivers three base knocks, I don't know how you justify not having Braun in the lineup. I mean, he was three for four with a double in this ballgame. So, and he played a solid first base. So, I, Braun's got to be back in there, right? I mean, if he's a left-handed hitter, I don't know why you, you wouldn't have him in the lineup tomorrow in a, in game two against, against towns in the righty. So, I thought Braun was really, was really a positive in this game as well. When we look at game two, this is going to be interesting because this entire series, if we're being honest, these two teams throughout, if you caught our preview episode, thank you, but these two teams really mirror each other with their, with the rotation. Evans and Elliott statistically very similar, very comparable. Big strikeout numbers, comparable walk numbers as well and innings pitched. Evans had thrown 41 and a third, Elliott 40, I'm sorry, 41 and two thirds, Elliott 40 and a third. So, very, very comparable. Coming into this, Elliott with 60 strikeouts, Evans with 59. So, Evans with 21 strike, walks, Elliott with 26. I mean, they were, they were so similar, just one's a veteran righty and one's a young, or one's a veteran lefty and one's a young righty. But you look at game two, you have two sophomore prospects with Schmidt going against Townsend. Now, Kay Townsend is a sophomore who is a, who is a draft eligible sophomore and he's a guy from the right side that's going to run it up there, mid-upper 90s. And you look at some of the draft projections, you'll find draft projections that have him as a top 10 pick. I don't think that's going to happen. Some of the scouts I talked to seem to believe that, yeah, I mean, I mean, I think that's believe that, I mean, it tends to happen. The high school prospects and the lefties tend to go higher. I think Kate Anderson last year, but Townsend is still a guy that's at worst a back of round one early round two guys. So you're going to face a prospect tomorrow, but so is Ole Miss and William Schmidt. And again, their numbers are comparable, except that Schmidt has, has thrown more innings on the season. 41 innings pitch, 56 strikeouts for Schmidt. Townsend has 46 strikeouts in just 29 and two thirds innings pitched. So you're talking about a dude with big time stuff and big time strikeout stuff that's going to be a real challenge for the LSU hitters. And by the way, Townsend only has seven walks on the season. So he's going to fill up the zone and he is going to strike out a lot of hitters. You're going to have to take advantage of opportunities when you get them. You can't run yourself in the outs in game two against a guy like Townsend. He's just too good. Your opportunities, you may have two or three innings against Townsend or in this ballgame where you actually have scoring opportunities. You're going to have to maximize those and you're going to need a big outing from William Schmidt. So the Tigers after this loss fall to six and seven in conference play, Ole Miss with the wind moves up to six and seven in conference play. You know, LSU and Ole Miss are part of this clump of like 10 teams in the SEC where you get the garbage at the bottom with South Carolina and Missouri. You have the really elite teams at the top right now with Georgia and Texas. So you're looking for, I mean, Bama's right there as well, I guess, but Bama lost to game one against Arkansas. But anyway, the point being, you have this big clump of teams that are all right now approaching the halfway point that are vying for and jockeying for positioning in the conference standings. So every game is so integral as you hit the halfway point. So it's a big opportunity for LSU in game two, but they're going to have to do it against a really good prospect in Townsend, but you have one going in your own right, William Schmidt. It's a massive opportunity to win the series. You're going to have to win game two. So you're going to need a giant outing from William Schmidt. Townsend's a righty. So I would assume LSU will line up, will throw out a line up with a bunch of lefties. I don't know how you justify taking, taking Aaron Beatty out of the lineup. I know we've seen CERNA catch Schmidt, but maybe Aaron Beatty catches Schmidt. If you're trying to get another left handed bat in the lineup, maybe you look somewhere down your bench. Perhaps you could DH York, or you could play York at first and you could DH Braun. But after this, Braun's got to be in the lineup one way or another. Maybe, maybe it's an opportunity for York to get in there and see if he can run into one, you know, fastball and Deadpool one to that, that, that, that short fence. So Tigers lose game one. I'm just scanning through my notes to see if there was anything else I had. It was just, just an ugly, ugly night for LSU. Brown struck out three. It's hard to fault Jake Brown. I mean, he had, he had the two run homer. You only scored three runs on the night and Brown gave you two of them, but he had three strikeouts. It's interesting because that's kind of the Ole Miss approach. They'll take, you know, they'll take one for five with three strikeouts. If the one is a two run homer, and that's what Brown gave you tonight. Aaron Beatty had a base knock in the ball game. Mylam was one for four and the one for Mylam. He struck out on two high fastballs, but the one for Mylam was finally some good baseball fortune. The little flare that, that landed. Steve, it's where the first bit of, where the, the, the second baseman and the, the right field overran the ball. It's where the first good of baseball fortune that Mylam's had in about, about a month. Sernay had a couple of hits in the ball game against, I don't know how you justify that taking these young guys out. I know I beat the drum a lot for Sernay and Brown, but they keep showing you why. You missed on these transfers. You missed on York. You missed on Dardar. You missed on Simpson. You missed on Caraway. So play, play the young guys with the super high ceiling. And I mean, you had two guys in the lineup tonight with multi hits and it was Brown and Sernay. So you got to keep playing the young guys. If they want to get a, another left handed bat in the lineup, maybe it's, maybe it's York. But again, you're going to take Sernay or Aaron B. The other lineup, hard to justify that. All right. Just a few takeaways after a really disappointing night there in Oxford, where it was a game that was there for the take in, especially at a tie ball game with the leadoff man on the top of the eighth. And you get picked off and go strike out, strike out, then completely implode in the bottom of the eighth. But great thing about baseball is you can flush this one, come back and play another game tomorrow. So tigers will play Ole Miss in game two there in Oxford on Saturday. Game two is set for a four o'clock central time. First pitch, it'll be Schmidt against Townsend. And it's a game where tigers really need Schmidt to deliver and go have a nice day and see if they can steal one and find a way to, to force the rubber match on Sunday and get a series win. All right. That'll do it for us here. Hey, thanks so much for hanging out on this Friday night. If you're with us live, please smash the like button, subscribe to the channel. If you're on demand, both podcast or YouTube, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. And one favor I do have to ask, if you're live with us on YouTube or if you're watching on demand on YouTube, but still really appreciate it, please continue watching with us on YouTube. But please go into your phone, your favorite podcast app, search for lockdown LSU and hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app because that'll still help us with search and all different times, things for people who do love the show and podcast or look for LSU content on podcasts. They can find us there. So I greatly appreciate it. All right, y'all. We'll be here for a post game episode on, on Saturday after the game and football tigers are back on the practice field Saturday. We do have full media availability in Tiger Stadium. So after that practice ends and as soon as I can get home, we'll, we'll fire up a, a practice report. So we'll look for you there as well. Okay, y'all until next time, it's locked on LSU, your team every day. Okay. Introducing the all new Mazda CX-5 featuring more connection. Hey, Google, where's the nearest Pilates class? Safety that has your back. More discovery on the scenic routes. More passion in the details. And more control in changing weather. The all new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at MazdaUSA.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC sequences shortened and simulated. It's tax time. And for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is just a lot. But this year you're getting an upgrade into it. Turbo tax now has in person locations where you can meet face to face with a real tax expert, get your documents uploaded and just like that, you're done. Your expert works to get you every dollar you deserve. While you get real time updates and go about your day, head to TurboTax.com slash local to book your appointment. The winner games are officially here. And if you're anything like us, you're locking in for events you only get to see on the biggest stage every four years. And that's why following the winner games on Fandal just makes sense. From metal counts to individual events to finding your angle on the sports you care about most. 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