LSU Faces Off Against UCLA Bruins in Game 8

The eight teams in Omaha have now been reduced to six remaining teams, and the LSU Tigers will take the stage against the UCLA Bruins to advance to the winners' bracket. This matchup will send one more team into the losers' bracket, a place that no one wants to be in.

The UCLA Bruins, coming in from California, are a formidable team that LSU may have to take seriously and look out for. This team comes from a conference where they play small ball and use aggression from the very beginning to take any chance they can get to score.

The Tigers are no stranger to the small-ball approach, having seen it in teams like West Virginia in the Baton Rouge super regional, with the final fight for Omaha redemption. This strategy was unfamiliar to the SEC team at the level of play where bats swing big and pitching is on a higher level.

Pitching Staff Watch

UCLA has played against Murray State so far in the tournament, so here is the need-to-know about this team going into Game 8 of the College World Series.

In the first game played in Omaha, the Bruins used starting pitcher Michael Barnett with a 4.09 ERA and recorded 77 pitches over 4.2 innings of work. After those four innings, utilizing five more pitchers to get the back half of the game done all throwing relatively low pitches.

So there will still be a wide range of pitching staff available to come out for this game, with all relatively good ERAs, but if the LSU bats stay right in the sweet spot of being able to swing and are able to play big ball this will set up to continue the Tigers in the winners bracket.

On the LSU pitching staff, ace pitcher Anthony Eyanson will toe the rubber after a questionable performance against West Virginia, looking for redemption just as Kade Anderson did on Saturday night.

Coming into this game with a 2.74 ERA and an 11-2 win-loss record, this will be very hard for the Bruins to come across hits like the usual nine hits per game or more, but after Eyanson puts in his work on the mound the pitching staff is fully available to relief wherever is needed.

The Starting Nine.

In the lineup for the Bruins, all starting nine are batting above .230, but one thing lacking on the stat sheet is the home run numbers that LSU has put up. Shortstop Roch Cholowsky leading the team with 23 homers and 74 RBI will be one person Eyanson will have to watchout for.

Although the home run numbers might not be immense, the number of RBIs this team has put up while hailing from the Big Ten conference has been impressive. With numbers like 85, 60 and 74, the Tigers' infield has to be on red alert.

For the Tigers, the starting nine have been consistent in finding the pocket and learning how to play “their brand of baseball” in this deep postseason run. Starters like Josh Pearson and Chris Stanfield, although not hitting big home run numbers, have found a pocket that just falls in the right spot to assist the team exactly when needed.

It can’t go without mentioning the freshman phenom Derek Curiel and pthe ride of Rosepine Ethan Frey, who have continued to shine game after game. With a lineup of this caliber, there needs to be awareness of the different styles of pitching.

Game 8 of the College World Series will be a sea of purple and gold that will come down to the fundamentals of the game. Who will be able to bring in the runs right when necessary, playing a small ball, aggressive game of baseball?