OMAHA, Neb. — Jay Johnson was a West Coast guy and doing just fine coaching at Arizona when the opportunity to take over at LSU came along.
The Tigers are college baseball blue bloods, though, and Johnson would have been lying if he said he weren’t at least interested in taking a look at succeeding the retiring Paul Mainieri after the 2021 season. Johnson said knowing he would have Dylan Crews on the roster for two years made the job irresistible.
With the Golden Spikes Award winner leading the way along with star transfers Paul Skenes and Tommy White, the Tigers made Johnson, a 46-year-old California native, the first NCAA Division I coach to win a national championship before his third year at a school.
LSU was the consensus No. 1 team in the nation from the preseason until May 8, and now the Tigers are back where they started after winning the College World Series, beating fellow Southeastern Conference program Florida 18-4 in Game 3 of the title round Monday night. It’s the program’s seventh national championship overall but first since 2009; the Tigers had lost their lone appearance in the CWS finals since then, getting swept by Florida in 2017.
This time, after winning the CWS finals opener on a walk-off home run in the 11th inning, the Tigers bounced back from a 24-4 loss in the second game, when they gave up the most runs ever in a CWS contest.