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OMAHA, Neb. — LSU staved off elimination from the Men’s College World Series for a second time. And now the Tigers are right where they expected to be all along.
Cade Beloso hit a go-ahead three-run homer, freshman Griffin Herring pitched 4⅔ innings of shutout relief in his longest outing and LSU forced a second-bracket final with a 5-2 victory over No. 1 national seed Wake Forest on Wednesday night.
The winner of the rematch Thursday night will advance to play Florida in the best-of-three championship series that starts Saturday. The Gators clinched their spot with a 3-2 win over TCU.
“We expect to be playing important baseball in June,” Tigers coach Jay Johnson said. “We play every game like we’re playing important baseball in June. Like, the Tuesday on March 22 against McNeese is a playoff game to us. The thought process behind that is if you do that all year long, then you can just stay in character when you get to the postseason.”
Wake Forest (54-11) will look to bounce back from its first loss in its eight NCAA tournament games. The Demon Deacons, who have not lost consecutive games this season, are trying to reach the championship round in their first MCWS appearance since the 1955 team won the national title.
“We’ll come out ready to play tomorrow like we’ve done all year,” Wake Forest coach Tom Walter said. “We’ve responded to adversity all year. Tomorrow will be no different.”
LSU hopes to set up a rematch of the 2017 finals, which Florida won.
“It’s the same game we’ve been playing since February,” Beloso said. “We’re going to go out there, have fun, we’re going to compete to the best of our abilities and let the rest take care of itself. Everybody knows the scenario. But you don’t have to put any more pressure on yourself.”
The coaches didn’t announce starting pitchers, but aces Paul Skenes of LSU and Rhett Lowder of Wake Forest were not ruled out.
The Deacons scored 75 runs and hit 19 homers in their first…
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