Mik’d Up! With Mikie Mahtook

With 2024 season hanging in the balance, LSU knows what's requiredAnybody can coach a team when it's top five in the country, is performing at a high level week in and week out and basically all sunshine with little rain. But it's when teams are in tumultuous, adverse times that make coaching more important than ever. That is what LSU coach Jay Johnson was asked very early in his press conference as the Tigers prepare to host Ole Miss in a must win series to keep their postseason hopes within reach.The Tigers have won three of their last four SEC series and have been playing better as a whole over the last month of the SEC schedule. But the fact remains that this team dug itself into a very steep hole which is why many of these games recently have had a postseason feel. Anybody can coach a team when it's top five in the country, is performing at a high level week in and week out and basically all sunshine with little rain. But it's when teams are in tumultuous, adverse times that make coaching more important than ever. That is what LSU coach Jay Johnson was asked very early in his press conference as the Tigers prepare to host Ole Miss in a must win series to keep their postseason hopes within reach.The Tigers have won three of their last four SEC series and have been playing better as a whole over the last month of the SEC schedule. But the fact remains that this team dug itself into a very steep hole which is why many of these games recently have had a postseason feel. Along the way, Johnson mentioned there has been a lot of 'psychological warfare' this group needed to work past and believes it has for the most part in terms of how they've competed. But even through all of the difficult one run losses to Alabama this past weekend, game two against Florida and Vanderbilt, this team still sits in a position where it can play its way into more meaningful baseball in two weeks. "We made a determination halfway through the league that we were going to maintain being positive with this team. That's what they needed. They didn't need me to tell them how horrible we were, how unacceptable this is and they've continued to give good effort," Johnson said. "It's not what anybody wants to hear but it's what they need and it's allowed us to play more important baseball this weekend."LSU's record outside of the conference stacks up with all of the best teams in the country, it won 13 games this year against teams projected to be in the NCAA tournament, have played a difficult enough schedule to reflect even the poor SEC record in the RPI and won an in season tournament in Texas. "Do I want to be 10-17 in SEC play? No. But we still have a chance and we'll prepare, play with great focus, energy and effort and give everything we can and hopefully put us in the best position 10 days from now to have a chance," Johnson said. Facing an Ole Miss team this weekend that is coming off its own series win against Texas A&M, the Rebels are in a very similar spot as LSU in that they need conference wins to boost their chances of making the NCAA tournament.In the latest D1 Baseball projections, LSU is among the 'First Four Out' of the tournament while Ole Miss is in the 'Next Four Out' bracket. It makes a series win for both programs a must and the LSU players certainly appear to understand the stakes of the next few days. "Even though we've gone through the ringer in the SEC, we still in a way are in control of what we can do. If we go out here and play a really good series and play to our full capabilities, all of our goals are still ahead of us," shortstop Michael Braswell said. "You can't help but not be aware of those things but at the end of the day, none of that matters unless we go out there and play well.""I think preparing for it is the same. It's super important and I wanna be the guy who pitches in those games where you have to win. I'm super excited for it," pitcher Gage Jump said. "Every pitch matters at this point in the season."A series win and LSU's pursuit of continuing its season is still alive. A series sweep and that pursuit is likely solidified. But for Johnson and the Tigers to get through the weekend, it will be approaching each day with intense focus on execution. "A lot at stake and playing important baseball at the last week of the season is a good thing. That's the expectation here but in spite of the difficulty, these games matter and just looking forward to the best effort at home. We're playing a team that's in a very similar situation. I can validate that this is really important to our players," Johnson said."The margin for error is really, really small and it won't be any different this weekend. The team that deserves to win, will win."