It was quite the all-around weekend for purple and gold baseball. Getting off to a tough start in SEC play, the Tigers have officially earned their first in-conference series win, and after a mostly encouraging injury report from LSU coach Jay Johnson, his team might be getting hot at the right time.
Tiger baseball wins their first SEC series of the 2024 campaign
After starting out the 2024 season with a 3-12 record in SEC play, LSU coach Jay Johnson and the Tigers were in desperate need of a big-time series win.
As it turned out, this past weekend would end up giving them exactly that, as the purple and gold earned their first conference series victory of the year, beating Missouri 2-1, highlighted by a 12-1 domination on Friday.
Prior to this past weekend, the last series win the Tigers earned came against Xavier in early March, coming away with a 2-1 win overall. Since then, they’ve been shutout twice and have even been run ruled three times.
Even so, this past weekend was encouraging for a number of reasons and – depending on how they perform this coming week – has the potential to have been a turning point for a team in desperate need of a spark.
LSU coach Jay Johnson shares encouraging injury report heading into new week
One of the main concerns coming out of the Tiger baseball series win over Missouri involved the status of star sophomore catcher Brady Neal.
One of three stellar catchers available to this purple and gold roster, the 5-foot-10, 193-pound underclassman came into the year recovering from a back injury that kept him out for the majority of 2023. Luckily, even despite the injury background, he’s proven to be a standout piece for this year’s team both on offense and defense and has largely stayed healthy.
However, early Saturday, it appeared that he might have aggravated something in his shoulder prior to the second game of the series, and while he tried to power through, it sounds as though it has the potential to keep him on the sidelines in the near future.
“Brady got hurt Saturday before the game. So he was kind of limited in what he could do, and he really toughed it out,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said about the talented sophomore. “Credit to him to get in there and play a little bit on Saturday.”
While we don’t yet have a full injury report on the Tallahassee, FL, product, the Tiger head coach made sure to emphasize that he doesn’t expect this to be a long term issue.
“He’s had a sore shoulder and he was trying to do some therapy on it, and aggravated it a little bit. It’s a soreness issue and mobility issue, and when you’re talking about swinging the bat, that can be difficult. But he’s strong for his size, and obviously we saw with the back thing, he was able to recover and get past that. So, I don’t think that it’s a long term thing at all, but we’re reevaluating that today.”
Brady Neal has seen 33 appearances for LSU baseball in 2024 and is already proving to be a boost for the team both on offense and defense. On the year, he’s recorded a solid 0.256 batting average for 23 hits, seven doubles and six homeruns on offense, while logging an impressive 0.979 fielding percentage for 175 putouts and 16 assists on the defensive side of things.
The purple and gold return to action tomorrow, Tuesday, April 23, 2024 against a challenging Nicholls team at Alex Box Stadium. The game will take place at 6:30 p.m. CST and will be available to watch live on SEC Network+.
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