Jay Johnson's Take: How Will LSU Baseball Look to Rebound Following First Loss?

Jay Johnson and the defending National Champion LSU Tigers suffered the program's first loss of the 2026 season on Tuesday night in a midweek matchup to the McNeese Cowboys.

LSU dropped to 8-1 with its first loss since June 4, 2025, when the Tigers were defeated in an NCAA Regional game by Little Rock.

Johnson and Co. won its final eight games of the 2025 season en route to the National Championship, and the Tigers began the 2026 season with eight consecutive victories.

“Congratulations to McNeese, they competed well in the game and deserved to win,” said LSU coach Jay Johnson. “We created some opportunities for them; there’s no point in belaboring it, we just gave up way too many free bases tonight.

“McNeese cashed in when they needed to early in the game; I thought our guys fought back and were just a couple of feet from winning it or sending it to extra innings. Baseball usually rewards the team that deserves to win, and McNeese deserved to win the game tonight.”

Now, after the Tigers' first loss of the season, what was Johnson's message to the team?

Jay Johnson's Take: Bouncing Back This Weekend

What Went Wrong in Alex Box Stadium:

“If I was to pinpoint something, I’d probably look at the second to the fourth inning. We’d been behind before in multiple games early on, but our response wasn’t as good tonight. Maybe we got outside of just taking a quality at-bat.

"When it was only 4-2, it almost took 7-2 to kind of get back in rhythm. I thought we ended the game fine—those guys started to put together at-bats.

"We scored in three of the last four innings. I just felt like we got a little outside of ourselves in the second to the fourth inning, and then it ended up being a little too late.”

How LSU Can Learn From First Loss:

“I think it can be valuable if you use it right. We’ve tried to coach into them: don’t make the same mistake once. We don’t need to lose a game to learn a lesson or put a high premium on how we play. To me, that’s what it’s about. It’s not about winning and losing—it’s about how we play. We left a lot on the table.

"With the pitching, it’s just clear free bases. That’s not rocket science. Defensively, we made one mistake: we overthrew the cutoff man and let the backside runner move up. We threw the ball in to where it ended up basically making it a triple, which was very costly.

"Offensively, early in the game after they got ahead, I thought we lost ourselves a little bit. We can learn from that.”

LSU Baseball. — Courtesy of LSU Tigers Baseball.

Chris Stanfield's Availability This Weekend:

“I hope so. We definitely need him. A couple days ago—swelling’s gone down a lot. Now it’s a matter of getting some strength back in his hand. Still a little sore to swing, but we are moving in that direction.

"I feel much better than I did a week ago. I don’t know if that means he’ll be available to play this weekend or not. I certainly hope so.”

The Main Message After Loss:

“I could sense they felt a lot of pressure as we were behind in the game, and I was a little surprised at that because we were behind opening day, we were behind against Indiana. I feel like there was maybe one other one in there.

"We played so well. In the middle of the game, I tried to shake them: hey man, nobody’s going to come after you for losing the game. For me, it’s about how we play. I wanted to get them back on track, and I thought they did that. They competed in the game fine. It wasn’t that we took the game lightly or anything like that. The message was we’ve done a really good job here respecting winning and what it takes to win.

"Part of that is learning the lessons from something like this, then leave this one behind and get ready for Friday. I’m confident we can do that. They need to know losing is part of this—just because we haven’t lost a lot here in a while doesn’t mean it isn’t.

"That’s why winning feels good. Detach from that, focus on how we could have played a little bit better, how we can learn from it, use it for improvement. That was really the message.”

More LSU News:

LSU Football, Ohio State Buckeyes, USC Trojans Among Top Schools for No. 4 Rated WR

LSU Football Predicted to Land Commitment From Elite Louisiana Running Back

Paul Finebaum Reveals Bold Statement on LSU Football's Lane Kiffin Amid Major Move

Join the Community:

Follow Zack Nagy on Twitter: @znagy20 and LSU Tigers On SI: @LSUTigersSI for all coverage surrounding the LSU Tigers.