One team had Kade Anderson, and the other did not.
LSU’s ace and likely top-10 overall pick in July’s MLB Draft completely dominated in his final start of the regular season, allowing one run in 6 ⅔ innings as the Tigers evened the series with South Carolina via an 8-1 victory at Founders Park.
The loss is South Carolina’s (28-27, 6-23 SEC) 23rd in conference play, confirming that 2025 will go down as the worst SEC season in program history. With one game remaining in the regular season, the Gamecocks will have to win it to avoid tying the most overall losses in a season before even arriving at the SEC Tournament.
“It was pretty much a one-sided game tonight,” Paul Mainieri said. “Kind of the story of a lot of games we’ve had this year. We just gave up home runs on defense and didn’t hit any on offense.”
LSU’s (41-13, 17-11) ace entered the game with a 3.66 ERA and 124 strikeouts on the season, and was nearly flawless.
Outside of one rough patch in the third inning where he allowed a double to KJ Scobey, a single to Gavin Braland and issued a walk, he completely tied up the Gamecock bats. He retired 11 batters in a row after his mini third inning wobble, doing exactly what you would expect an elite arm to do against an overmatched lineup. By the time he departed with 106 pitches the Tigers had a 5-1 lead, allowed just four hits, issued just the one walk in the third inning and struck out nine batters.
“Kade Anderson is what they look like, first-round picks,” Mainieri said. “He dazzled us tonight mixing his pitches. We had a couple opportunities and just couldn’t capitalize on it. You’re not going to get many opportunities against a guy like him.”
Another superstar led LSU’s offense, first baseman Jared Jones. The slugger entered the game leading the Tigers in home runs with 16, and added two more to his total with a third inning blast off Jake McCoy and a towering 434-foot shot in the seventh off Matthew Becker. Ethan Frey also homered off McCoy in the third inning, part of another outing where South Carolina’s No. 2 starter struggled with command.
The sophomore left-hander walked five batters and hit one in five innings, concluding his regular season total at 57 free passes issued in 60 innings.
“He’s a young kid with a good arm and sometimes it’s just hard for him to corral it,” It’s not even just the walks, he falls behind in the count so often and then he has to lay one in there.”
The rubber game of the series is scheduled for Saturday at 3 p.m. EDT, with South Carolina sending Dylan Eskew to the mound against LSU’s Anthony Eyanson. The Gamecocks are already locked into the No. 15 seed for the SEC Tournament starting on Tuesday, while the Tigers would clinch a double-bye in Hoover with a victory in the regular season finale.
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