LSU players talk about facing familiar opponent Tennessee at College World Series

LSU and Tennessee will face off in the fourth game of the College World Series, played on Saturday evening. And while it’ll be the first game in Omaha for the Tigers and Volunteers, both squads are quite familiar with each other.

The SEC foes already played a three-game series earlier this year in Baton Rouge as the calendar flipped from March to April. The Tigers took that series, winning a pair of games — but they know the Volunteers are plenty dangerous.

“A very good team. I have total respect for them. Great program. Definitely know how to win. We have to play our best baseball for this game. Great pitching staff,” star centerfielder Dylan Crews said. “We saw them early in the year, so kind of have an idea going into this game. But, yeah, like I said, we have to play our best baseball right now.”

In that original series, LSU took the first two games before Tennessee’s offense exploded for 14 runs in the third game.

The Tigers are well aware that there’s a potential for the Tennessee offense to pounce. But with ace pitcher Paul Skenes starting and plenty of confidence up and down the order after dominating both the Regional and Super Regional rounds, LSU is ready to go.

Pitcher Thatcher Hurd is confident that if he and his teammates play their brand of baseball, they’ll handle business.

“A lot of the SEC teams, we see them in conference and the SEC tournament, saw them in the postseason. It’s just about playing our baseball and staying true to what we know,” Hurd said.

The LSU players demanded more from themselves after a poor SEC Tournament showing

LSU saw their stay in Hoover at the SEC Tournament cut short before the semifinals. Arkansas bounced the Tigers out, leaving them to focus on the NCAA Tournament. It’s worked thus far, with head coach Jay Johnson preparing to have his team take the field in Omaha. But it’s been the players leading the team over the past couple of weeks, beginning with a team meeting.

Crews revealed what the message of the team meeting was heading into the Baton Rouge Regional. LSU made sure they were going to play LSU baseball. Doing so is a good thing, as the Tigers were consistently one of the best teams in the country — a good recipe when competing for the national champions.

“Just sticking to our game really,” Crews said. “I think we’re in a very good spot right now. Like I said, the momentum is tremendous in this team right now. I think everything is just kind of clicking for us right now.”

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