Jay Johnson on SEC depth: ’14 teams out of 14′ could reach Omaha

It comes as no surprise to LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson that his 11-seeded Tigers are playing for an SEC Tournament Championship against No. 1 seed Tennessee on Sunday.

Given the strength of the SEC on a yearly basis, Johnson believes the seeding system didn’t matter all that much this postseason. After all, they beat a 10-seeded South Carolina team and Tennessee beat an 8-seeded Vanderbilt team in the semifinals. Not to mention that D1 Baseball projects 11 of the conference’s 14 teams to make the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s just not like anything else,” Johnson said of the SEC. “I say that with great respect for teams all over the country. There’s great teams. It’s going to be an unbelievable NCAA Tournament with the North Carolinas, the Florida States, the Clemsons, the Arizonas, all the — the Oklahomas, the Oklahoma States, Dallas Baptist, Southern Miss.

“There’s great college baseball everywhere. There’s 14 teams out of 14 that could play in the NCAA Tournament and find their way to Omaha.”

Johnson pointed to LSU’s schedule this season as proof. He mentioned consecutive series featuring Mississippi State — Johnson’s preseason sleeper team who finished No. 15 in the latest D1 Baseball rankings — Florida, who LSU defeated to win the national title one year ago, a top-five-ranked Arkansas squad, Vanderbilt at home before traveling to No. 1 Tennessee.

Throw in a series against a then-No. 1 Texas A&M team in early May, and LSU had one of the hardest schedules in the country this season.

“Nobody else did that,” Johnson said. “Being here now for three years, there’s one [conference] that’s just not like the others. It can’t be looked at the same. It can’t be evaluated the same. The players aren’t the same. The fans aren’t the same. The environments aren’t the same. The athletes aren’t the same. I always really believed we had a good team. We did win the national championship last year. We have 20 players from that roster that were here.

“We had a really tough schedule. … But I knew if we could just kind of hang in there enough, we would be okay,” Johnson continued. “The players deserve all the credit for staying positive, continuing to work hard. It’s a great life lesson for everybody to put your head down, work, stay positive, and good things can happen, and that was our only choice because of this league.”

The first pitch for the 2024 SEC Tournament final is scheduled for a 3 p.m. ET start time as the Tigers look to win their first conference tournament since 2017.

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