While the LSU women’s basketball team is searching for some newfound success it hasn’t had in quite some time, the baseball team is just looking to get nudged over the hump.
The Tigers have only missed the postseason once since 2008, making it all the way to the Super Regionals or beyond nine times in that span. Mainieri led the team to the College World Series five times in his tenure and won the national title in 2009.
“(Coach Mainieri) is just an elite human being and a good program leader,” Jay Johnson says of his predecessor. “When you talk about the pinnacle of college baseball, that’s what I view LSU as. Skip (Bertman), to me, is the John Wooden of college baseball. He motivated me as a young coach. I like to think of myself as somebody that has studied the best and taken things that can help me be better as a coach and implemented them in my program. That’s led me to (LSU), and I couldn’t be more excited about that.”
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Johnson will spend the next few months beginning to mold the program in his own image, but he’s already begun having success both on the recruiting trail and in the transfer portal.
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But even more important than the squad of players Johnson has at his disposal are the three core pillars he wants his team to live by: fundamentals, competitiveness and character.
“Being incredibly fundamentally sound is rooted in work—the right kind of work—and development,” Johnson says. “There’s no program, no team that can value winning more than LSU baseball, and that’s going to be reflected in our actions. And I want to build a program of people—players and staff—of high character. That’s basically guys that make sound decisions day after day after day, that lead to winning.”
This article was originally published in the Tiger Pride 2021 issue of 225 magazine.