Casan Evans dominates, striking out a career-high 15 as the LSU Tigers opened their second SEC series with a win over the Oklahoma Sooners.
The LSU Tigers baseball team needed to start this weekend against the No. 8-ranked Oklahoma Sooners strong after dropping out of the top 25, and that's exactly what they did.
Casan Evans delivered the best start of his career, and the Tigers got to former teammate Cameron Johnson early to make this a stress-free Thursday night win to improve to 16-7 on the year and 2-2 in SEC play.
Evans had started to lose some support outside of the building as the "Friday night" guy, but Jay Johnson stood by him every step of the way. Tonight proved why they had chalked most of the rough start up to bad luck.
The sophomore went 7.2 innings and struck out a career-high 15 batters while giving up just three hits, a walk and an unearned run.
This Sooners offense did get shut out by the Southeastern Lions in the midweek game a couple of days ago, but it's still a great sign to see Evans deliver such a dominant performance. He was able to bring some of the swagger back that made fans fall in love with him.
Ethan Plog gave up a hit to the one batter he saw, and then Zac Cowan finished the game out with a clean 1.1 innings.
Oklahoma's ace, Johnson, started his career with LSU before transferring ahead of the 2025 campaign. He had been cruising to begin his junior year, but has now had two bad outings in a row with just 4.0 innings in SEC play.
Johnson didn't allow a hit, but walked six batters and hit another. The Sooners' defense made every mistake worse. He allowed five total runs, but only one was earned. Still, it was a poor showing.
The offensive MVP for the Tigers was Omar Serna Jr., who went 2-for-3 with a double, a walk and a hit by pitch. His average is up to .279 on the year and a clutch .429 with runners in scoring position. He has one of the highest ceilings on the team, so it's good to see development so early in his career.
It was a game where a couple of the team's lesser contributors stepped up. Zach Yorke, who was moved down in the order, had two RBI. Trent Caraway went 1-for-2 with two walks.