Play of the game: Leon Landry had been LSU's starting left fielder until a midseason lineup shuffle left him the odd man out. Tigers coach Paul Mainieri decided to start him Tuesday night to try to offset Jungmann's toughness on right-handed hitters. The coach was rewarded when Landry turned in the defensive play of the CWS. Landry turned a potential extra-base hit by Texas' Kevin Keyes into the second out of the fifth inning with a spectacular catch on the warning track. After a dead sprint to the corner, Landry laid out and snared Keyes' drive just before getting a face full of warning track.
Critical decision: Mainieri's pitching options for a second-game starter were ace Anthony Ranaudo on three days' rest or Austin Ross, the Tigers' No. 3 starter who in two previous CWS appearances had faced 15 batters and given up seven hits. With a game to play with, Mainieri decided to go with Ross. He lasted two innings, giving up two runs on four hits. The damage might have been greater, but Michael Torres was caught stealing to end the second inning. The good news for Mainieri is that Ranaudo will have another 24 hours of rest before facing Texas in tonight's decisive third game.
Defining moment: Jungmann's teammates had just scored three runs to give him a 5-1 lead when he went out to pitch the bottom of the third inning. The Longhorns needed a shutdown inning from him, and they got it with a little drama mixed in. DJ LeMahieu opened the inning with a triple down the right-field line. Jungmann came back to get Ryan Schimpf on a soft liner to second, walked the dangerous Blake Dean, struck out Micah Gibbs and got Mikie Mahtook to hit into a forceout. LSU would advance only one runner as far as third base the rest of the game.
Quirky play: Texas turned two double plays, the second when LSU's Dean was called out for leaving second base early in trying to advance on Micah Gibbs' long fly ball to center field in the sixth inning. Dean had opened the inning with an infield single and moved to second when Texas second baseman Travis Tucker was charged with an error for failing to stop the ball while covering first base on the play. Gibbs followed with a long drive to center, and Dean tagged up and moved to third. After getting the ball back to the infield, Texas appealed that Dean had left early, and second-base umpire Jeff Henrichs called the LSU runner out.
They said it: “It just wasn't our night tonight, that's all. We're not going to make more out of it than what it was. The stakes were high, their pitcher pitched great, we made a few mistakes, we didn't hit well enough nor did we pitch well enough. We're going to turn the page and get ready for tomorrow.'' — LSU's Mainieri.
Our take: No one expected the Longhorns to roll over with their season on the line. Texas showed grit in pulling out the win that evened the series and forced tonight's decisive third game. It also helped that the Longhorns had Jungmann on the mound. He's shown in Omaha that he's the latest in Texas' long line of great pitchers.
— Steven Pivovar
Taylor Jungmann got Texas to Omaha with one standout pitching performance.
He kept the Longhorns here with an even better one Tuesday night against Louisiana State at the College World Series.
The 6-foot-6 freshman right-hander pitched the first complete game of his career in beating the Tigers 5-1 and evening the best-of-three championship finals at a win apiece. LSU, which had hit .340 in its first nine games of the NCAA tournament, managed just five hits off Jungmann in losing for the first time in 15 games.
“It would have been nice to win tonight and wrap it up, but the kid that pitched for them tonight obviously had something to say about us having to stay around another day,'' said LSU coach Paul Manieri, whose team fell to 55-17. “He was outstanding.''
Jungmann's win, before 21,871 fans at Rosenblatt Stadium, was his record-tying third in Omaha as well as his fourth of the tournament. His first NCAA victory came in the third game of the super regional, when Texas was facing a must-win situation against Texas Christian.
Jungmann responded by holding the Horned Frogs to two hits in six innings, and Texas claimed its 33rd CWS trip with a 5-2 victory.
That visit would have ended had the Longhorns (50-15-1) not won Tuesday after they had dropped a 7-6, 11-inning decision in Monday's opening game of the finals. Jungmann had thrown six pitches — all balls — in that game as Texas coach Augie Garrido had tried to use his freshman star to close out the game in the ninth inning.
That failed experiment didn't impact Garrido's confidence in handing the ball to Jungmann in Tuesday's win-or-go-home scenario.
“I have the utmost confidence in the simple approach he takes to pitching and his talent and his skills and his mentality,” Garrido said. “He is a pitcher, and a really good one.''
Jungmann showed just how good he was by limiting the Tigers to four singles and a triple by DJ LeMahieu. He walked two and struck out nine, and the only run LSU scored off of him was unearned.
He threw 126 pitches, with some of his most effective deliveries coming after LeMahieu had opened the LSU third inning with a triple. Texas had scored three runs in its half of the third to give Jungmann a 5-1 lead, but the leadoff triple had the Tigers in position to counter.
Jungmann never gave them the chance. He got Ryan Schimpf on a soft liner to second baseman Travis Tucker for the first out. He walked LSU designated hitter Blake Dean but stranded the runners at first and third by striking out Micah Gibbs and getting Mikie Mahtook to hit into an inning-ending forceout.
LSU got just two hits off Jungmann in the final six innings and advanced a runner as far as third just once.
“He just changed speeds well and kept his pitches down in the zone,'' LSU right fielder Jared Mitchell said. “He had a lot of movement low in the zone, and that made it tough for us.''
Garrido also cited the late afternoon rainstorm that delayed the game an hour and 34 minutes and made conditions much more tolerable as a big boost for Jungmann. The front that moved through the area dropped the temperature from the high 90s to 82 degrees at game time.
“The rain played an important part in this,'' Garrido said. “It took the temperature way down and it took away a lot of the humidity. That helped Taylor in many ways.”
Texas touched LSU starter Austin Ross for a run in the first on Brandon Belt's RBI single, then made it 2-0 in the second when Preston Clark joined the Longhorns' late-season home run rampage. Clark's drive into the left-field bleachers was Texas' 12th in Omaha for a team that had hit just 39 in its first 61 games.
The Tigers cut the deficit to 2-1 when two singles and shortstop Brandon Loy's fielding error sparked a two-out rally in their half of the second. Mainieri, who considered the Tigers fortunate to have allowed just two runs in the first two innings, went to his bullpen to open the third, bringing in left-hander Ryan Bryd.
Russell Mouldenhauer, one of three left-handed hitters in the Texas lineup, backfired the move when he drove a pitch halfway up the bleachers in right-center field. The bomb was Moldenhauer's fourth in Omaha, tying the record for home runs in the CWS.
Doubles by Cameron Rupp and Connor Rowe produced Texas' fourth run, and Clark greeted reliever Nolan Cain with a run-scoring single that made it 5-1.
CWS Finals Game 2 Box Score
Contact the writer:
679-2298, steve.pivovar@owh.com
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