Ty Floyd’s Historic Night Leads LSU Past Florida In Men’s College World Series Finals

Image credit: Ty Floyd (Courtesy LSU)

OMAHA—After the fifth inning Saturday night, LSU pitching coach Wes Johnson checked in with starter Ty Floyd. The righthander was north of 80 pitches on the night and had just turned over the lineup for a third time. With game 1 of the College World Series finals against Florida tied at 2, it was a critical time for the Tigers’ pitching plan.

Floyd, a junior, made his intentions for the night clear.

“ ‘You ain’t pulling me for a while, I’m good. This is the last time I’m throwing in this uniform and I’m going. I’ll let you know when I’m out of gas,’ ” Johnson remembered Floyd saying. “He didn’t want to come out.”

Floyd got LSU through eight innings and made history. He struck out 17 batters, the most in a CWS game since Arizona State’s Eddie Bane struck out 17 against Oklahoma in 1972. Floyd’s performance was the latest star turn on the mound for the Tigers and helped them fend off the powerful Florida offense.

The LSU offense and lefthander Riley Cooper, the Tigers’ Omaha relief ace, picked up where Floyd left off. The Tigers slugged three home runs and Cooper threw three scoreless innings and LSU beat Florida, 4-3, in 11 innings. LSU is now one victory shy of winning the best-of-three championship series.

“Great college baseball game,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “Two of the best teams in the country, a ton of execution by both teams from the mound. Great defensive plays. Really good, quality at-bats.”

The formula for victory was a simple and familiar one for LSU in Omaha. It’s gone 5-1 at Charles Schwab Field over the last eight days, using timely home runs and gutty performances on the mound.

Floyd’s start was the gaudiest yet for LSU. Over eight innings, he struck out 17 batters and held the Gators to three runs on five hits and a walk. He threw a career-high 122 pitches, leaving everything he had on the mound.

“With as many people as were here tonight, the adrenaline felt good,” Floyd said. “I knew that throwing my fastball at the top of the zone, being able to mix in offspeed pitches enough to get them off was the biggest thing tonight.”

Floyd’s 17 strikeouts matched Charlotte’s Wyatt Hudepohl for the most in a game this season nationally and were the most for an SEC pitcher since Kumar Rocker struck out 19 in his 2019 super regionals no-hitter. Only Ohio State’s Steve Arlin has ever struck out more batters in a CWS game, as he whiffed 20 batters in 15 innings against Washington State in 1965.

Floyd attacked the Gators with his trademark high-spin fastball that rides on hitters, measuring as much as 20 inches of induced vertical break. He paired it with a quality changeup and mixed in just enough curveballs to keep hitters guessing.

Floyd’s stuff is good enough to pile up strikeouts and he came into Saturday averaging 11.17 strikeouts per nine innings. But he’d never had a night like this, especially considering the opponent—Florida is the SEC champion and averages 7.8 runs per game—and stage.

“Ty did a really, really good job tonight of locating his fastball down and then back up,” Wes Johnson said. “We worked his fastball vertically and he executed it every time I called it. If you look in the seventh and eighth, he started going to a changeup and that threw them off because they were trying to cheat to that heater.”

Florida did get a few big hits against Floyd, including a home run from catcher BT Riopelle that went 386 feet into the right field bleachers. But the Gators struggled to string anything together all night.

“He has a fastball that kind of plays like it rides a little bit with an induced vertical break,” Riopelle said. “It’s a lower slot. The shadow isn’t the easiest thing at the beginning of the game; it got shown for both teams in the early innings.

“He’s a great pitcher who threw it really well tonight.”

Floyd improved to 7-0, 4.35 with 120 strikeouts and 37 walks in 91 innings this season. He ranks 12th nationally in strikeouts.

Despite those numbers, Floyd has gone under the radar or worse much of the season. A large part of that has been because he follows Paul Skenes in the LSU rotation and it’s hard for anyone to compare to a pitcher who is drawing comparisons to Ben McDonald, Mark Prior and Stephen Strasburg.

But Floyd is plenty good in his own right. He projects as a second-round pick next month and has lived up to expectations since last summer deciding to return to LSU for a third season instead of moving on to professional baseball as a draft-eligible sophomore.

“He had a terrific season,” Jay Johnson said. “Nothing better than that tonight. But we’re not sitting here in this position without Ty Floyd. I feel like he’s one of the most underrated, underappreciated players in college baseball this year.”

That’s not to say, however, that Floyd hasn’t had some ups and downs over the last four months. In back-to-back starts against Alabama and Auburn in late April and early May, he gave up a total of nine runs in 6.1 innings and didn’t get out of the fourth either time. But he bounced back for a quality start the next week against Mississippi State and has been mostly solid throughout the postseason.

To keep Floyd in a strong place mentally through some of those tough times this season, Wes Johnson said he frequently messaged the righthander with videos of his swings and misses.

“Never forget how good you are, you’re never going to outperform your self-image,” Wes Johnson said of his message. “Never forget how good you are, that’s what I pepper him with.”

It’s worked well. Floyd never wavered against the Gators, even after giving up the lead on Riopelle’s home run. He retired the final seven batters he faced, striking out six of them.

“That’s pitching at the highest level,” Jay Johnson said.

Floyd’s performance will go down as one of the all-timers in Omaha history. Even in an era where high strikeout totals are more common, he’s still the first pitcher in the 21st century to strike out more than 15 batters in a CWS game.

But as good as it was, LSU still needed late-game heroics to fend off Florida. Tommy White hit a clutch home run for the second game in a row when he tied the game at 3 in the eighth inning with a drive into the left field bleachers. The game stayed tied until the 11th, when Cade Beloso drove a home run out to right field against Florida closer Brandon Neely.

Cooper threw the final three innings, holding the Gators off the scoreboard. He got a big assist in that regard from left fielder Josh Pearson. With runners on first and second and one out in the 10th inning, Wyatt Langford lined a ball to left field at 112 mph off the bat. Pearson was positioned perfectly but the ball was still scorched at him, and he had to take a few steps back to make a game-saving catch.

“That’s what I’m talking about with just filling up the strike zone and trusting my defense,” Cooper said. “I completely trust him, and he saved me out there.”

Cooper has now pitched in four of LSU’s six games in Omaha. He’s thrown 8.2 scoreless innings, struck out nine batters and held opponents to four hits and three walks.

LSU’s Omaha run has produced big moment after big moment. At every turn, the Tigers have had a player step up and lead them to victory. Now, they are on the precipice of history.