GRRR-EIGHT: LSU sweeps Coastal to win College World Series

Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

By Hunt Palmer

THE STORY

OMAHA, Neb.—It’s time to throw another coat of paint on The Intimidator.

LSU held off a game Coastal Carolina team, 5-3, to sweep the College World Series final and deliver the program’s eighth national championship back to Baton Rouge.

The Tigers used a little bit of everything on Sunday evening. Anthony Eyanson gave LSU a marvelous start. The offense knocked Chanticleer ace Jacob Morrison out after 3.2 innings. Chris Stanfield made a gem of a defensive play in center field, and the stellar middle infield duo of Daniel Dickinson and Steven Milam turned a clean double play to finish the job of Chase Shores who worked the last 2.2 innings without allowing a run.

It was the perfect finale for college baseball’s most complete, consistent and clutch team.

Coastal struck first with a solo shot from Dean Mihos that snuck over the wall near the left field foul pole in the bottom of the second.

LSU answered in the next half inning on a blistered RBI double to left off Ethan Frey’s bat. It left the barrel at 114 mph and flew left fielder Sebastian Alexander’s glove. That was really the first hard contact off Morrison who looked great in the first two frames.

Then came the fourth. Morrison really lost his sharpness. And LSU made him pay.

Jake Brown drew a leadoff walk on five pitches. Jared Jones laced a single to leftcenter, and Luis Hernandez was hit by a pitch to load the bases for Stanfield and the bottom of the LSU order.

Stanfield stung an elevated fastball for a two-run single to left that gave the Tigers a 3-1 lead. After a sac bunt by Dickinson, Michael Braswell popped up with runners on second and third and one out. I didn’t love sacrificing in front of Braswell who was 0-for his last 21.

It didn’t matter because Derek Curiel stepped up and laced a two-out, two-run single to put LSU up 5-1 and chase Morrison. The big right-hander kept leaving the ball up in the strike zone, and LSU kept pounding line drives.

The 3.2 innings from Morrison was his shortest outing of the season, and the five earned runs were the most he’d allowed all season.

After that outburst, though, the Tiger bats cooled considerably. LSU mustered just three hits the rest of the way and failed to tally another run against the Coastal bullpen trio of Hayden Johnson, Darin Horn and Ryan Lynch.

It was up to Eyanson and Shores to make the 5-1 lead stand up, They did.

Eyanson never worked a 1-2-3 frame, but as he’s done all season, he skirted the damage until the seventh. He hit eight-hole hitter Ty Dooley and then surrendered a line drive, two-run homer to Wells Sykes that made it 5-3 and woke up a Charles Schwab Field crowd that had drifted into something of a malaise in the middle innings.

Shores came on in relief and may have pitched his best baseball as a Tiger.

He fired 27 pitches over his 2.2 scoreless innings, and 22 of them were strikes. He hammered the strike zone with that triple-digit heater and retired eight of the nine he faced. The lone baserunner was Mihos’s leadoff single in the ninth.

That brought the tying run to the plate twice, but Shores got the strikeout of Dooley and the 4-6-3 double play ball to end it.

The towering Texan hurler faced the minimum as Casan Evans warmed up in the bullpen beyond the outfield wall. Evans’s next pitch may be the first of LSU’s 2026 season.

The game’s first inning was marred by the ejection of Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall and assistant Matt Schilling after Schnall argued balls and strikes after being warned. Schilling was ejected as the arguing continued and spilled onto the field.

Coastal finished the season 56-12. They won 26 straight games to reach the title series before running into a Tiger team that was just better in every phase of the game.

LSU wraps its championship season 52-15 having swept through the College World Series for the first time since 2000.