By Kenny Burgess
The 2023 Men’s College World Series Final gave us a bit of everything — a SEC rivalry renewed, a nail-biting finish, and astonishing blowouts. LSU was crowned champion on Monday, Jun. 26 when it soundly defeated the Florida Gators by a score of 18-4. Before LSU captured the title with a beat down of the Gators, the two had split the first two games in order to force a winner-take-all Game 3.
LSU led the series in the beginning following a thrilling 4-3 extra-innings win in Game 1. It was a back-and-forth affair, but LSU’s pitching and big-time homers put the Tigers over the top. LSU starter Ty Floyd made CWS history by recording 17 strikeouts, which tied the mark set by Arizona State’s Ed Bane in 1972. Even though Floyd was absolutely dominant, the Tigers still saw themselves trailing 3-2 heading into the eighth inning. Tommy White (“Tommy Tanks”) authored a game-tying, 0-2 home run – his 24th blast of the season – with LSU just five outs from defeat. Then in the 11th inning, it was time for Cade Beloso to play the role of hero, and his solo home run put the Tigers up for good as they hung on for the win.
Game 2 was an entirely different story and it was all Gators. After dropping the first game of the series, Florida responded with a historic 24-4 thumping over LSU (the 24 runs scored by Florida were the most ever scored in CWS history). It seemed as though it might have been too much for LSU to rebound from less than 24 hours later, but that certainly wasn’t the case.
LSU could have folded, but instead rebounded with a beatdown of its own and hung 18 runs up on the Gators to bring the title back to Baton Rouge. After Florida jumped out with a 2-0 lead in the first inning, the Tigers responded with 11 unanswered runs and never looked back. LSU star and projected first-overall pick, Dylan Crews, led the way for the Tigers with four hits and talked about his team’s mindset following their disappointing game two results.
“We got punched in the mouth yesterday,” Crews said, as reported by ESPN. “That’s the beauty of baseball. You wake up in the morning and do it all over again. We woke up today and you could see on everybody’s faces that we were ready to go. Nobody in the country was going to beat us today.”
This was the Tigers’ seventh national title overall, their first since 2009. The Tigers now stand alone with the second most titles of all time, only behind the USC Trojans. Coincidentally, this was the Tigers’ first trip to the finals since 2017 when they fell to the Gators.
This puts an end to the college baseball season and the final did not disappoint. Two of the country’s best teams traded haymakers and in the end, LSU was able to come out on top.
Photo credit: LSU Baseball’s Instagram
