OMAHA, Neb. — After 61 days — a full two months — of undefeated baseball, it was beginning to feel like it would take something truly spectacular to end Coastal Carolina’s impossible-to-do-these-days 26-game winning streak. Something rarely seen, produced by someone rarely seen.
That someone’s name was LSU’s Kade Anderson. And that something was actually a handful of somethings.
In the opening game of the best-of-three Men’s College World Series finals Saturday, the 20-year-old threw only the second complete game of his collegiate career. He also threw just the third complete game shutout seen in the current 22-year era of the MCWS finals. It was also the first 1-0 victory for LSU in its prolific, nearly unparalleled Omaha history.
By the time Anderson had thrown the last of his 130 pitches, the Tigers had ended the Chanticleers’ streak and extended LSU’s own postseason run of seven consecutive wins, now a perfect 4-0 in Omaha and one victory away from the program’s eighth national title.
“Kade is the best pitcher on the planet,” said LSU head coach Jay Johnson, openly assuming that the Washington Nationals will use the first pick of next month’s MLB draft to make the Slidell, Louisiana, native a member of their organization. “Even with his struggles tonight, when I went out to talk to him, he looked at me and said, ‘Don’t worry about me. I got this.’ I have never doubted him before. I wasn’t going to start tonight.”
He did indeed struggle. Well, as much as a rubber-armed 98 mph thrower can struggle. He countered his 10 strikeouts with five walks and hit two batters — actually, the same batter twice — contributing to Coastal’s nation-leading HBP tally.
Those relatively tiny struggle stats loomed large only because CCU refused to go away. The Chanticleers put runners on and got those runners into scoring position, but they were 0-for-9 when they got there. Meanwhile, LSU was being handled by Coastal Carolina pitcher Cameron Flukey, who smoked through six innings and was relieved by equally impressive Dominick Carbone. The only run they surrendered came in the first inning, and that was manufactured via an LSU seven-pitch walk, a groundout and a single. The game’s only score came in its very first stanza. The Tigers were on 2-of-14 with runners on base.
“Everything was working today,” Flukey said in the postgame news conference. “To go through a lineup like that, yeah, it was working.”
Then, after he left that stage and entered the concourse, teammate and catcher Caden Bodine wrapped his arm around his pitcher and said, “It was working. It was working for both of you guys. Classic duel, man.”
The winner of that duel, knowing this would be his last pitching in an LSU uniform, was asked how often, as a Louisiana kid, had he dreamed of winning a game like this for the state sport’s pride and joy in their Omaha home away from the bayou home.
“Every single night,” he replied. Then he course-corrected on behalf of his entire team. “But this game also didn’t win the College World Series. We have to win more.”
To do that, LSU will face Coastal’s ace Jacob Morrison. On Saturday night, Anderson boosted his record to 12-1. On Sunday afternoon, Morrison will try to hit 13-0. And while the rest of the college baseball world will spend the time in between assuming that the momentum of a Game 1 win will carry a team to the eventual title, the two head coaches know better.
“If it was going to be easy, then there would be two national champions,” said Kevin Schnall, who is in his first season as head coach of his alma mater. “We won 26 in a row. Let’s just call it what it is. The odds were not in our favor to win 28 and 0 and win a national championship. So, now we respond. We know how to do that. We did it a lot tonight. It just didn’t bounce our way.”
Remember the stat about Anderson’s complete game shutout being just the third in the MCWS finals since 2003? The last one came in 2016, when Arizona’s JC Cloney hurled a full night’s work in the opening game of the champ series. Like Anderson, he also allowed only three hits in a 1-0 victory. But the Wildcats, who were then coached by Johnson, dropped the next two and lost the title. Who won the championship? Coastal Carolina, with then-assistant coach Schnall on the staff.
“I don’t need to do any psychological work with these guys tonight,” Schnall said as he stood among his players as they prepared to board the bus for their hotel and a night of strategic studies and hopefully a little sleep ahead of Sunday’s game (2:30 p.m. ET on ABC). “Now we are challenged with winning two games in a row. We know how to do that. But first, we have to win one game before we start focusing on the next one.”
Then, in a rare crack of his usual stoic, hyperfocused stone-cold game face, Schnall showed just a hint of a smirk. Perhaps he was speaking for everyone in college baseball when he quipped: “And we don’t ever have to see Kade Anderson ever again.”