JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The defending national champion and top-ranked LSU Tigers claimed the Live Like Lou Jax College Baseball Classic title with an 11-0 victory over UCF on Sunday afternoon at VyStar Ballpark in Jacksonville.
The Knights dropped to 4-3 on the season with the setback and finished the weekend with a 1-2 showing at the tournament. LSU improved to 8-0 on the year after going an unblemished 3-0 at the event.
“LSU is a tough team,” head UCF coach Rich Wallace said. “Schmidt’s stuff is electric and has great command of multiple secondary pitches. When you face dominating stuff like that you need to find a way to sit on one of them and we kept getting caught in between all night.”
Black and Gold starter Camden Wicker got off to a strong start by recording an inning-ending strikeout to strand a runner in the first and followed that up with back-to-back looking punchouts in the second to keep the game scoreless in the early stages.
The Tiger offense got things going in the top of the third by scoring a trio of runs to take a 3-0 advantage. Jake Brown and Seth Dardar picked up RBIs in the frame for LSU.
Former Tiger and current Knight reliever Chandler Dorsey settled down in the fourth and retired LSU in order in the frame. Javier Crespo then doubled in the bottom of the inning for UCF but was stranded on the base paths to keep it a 3-0 score.
The Tigers then added to their lead in the fifth, as Cade Arrambide hit out a two-run home run to left, Trent Caraway drove in another on a sac fly and Derek Curiel capped the scoring in the inning with an RBI single to make it 7-0.
The Knights threatened in the last of the fifth by getting two runners into scoring position on a leadoff hit from Stephen Chucka and a two-out walk from Braden Calise, but LSU starter William Schmidt pitched out of it by drawing an inning-ending flyout.
The Tigers then added to their lead in the seventh with a two-run double from Derek Curiel and a two-run single from Brown to put the game away.
Schmidt earned the win for LSU en route to earning Live Like Lou Jax Classic Tournament MVP honors after striking out seven and allowing just two hits and one walk over 5.0 innings to move to 2-0 on the season. Wicker was tagged with the loss for UCF to drop to 1-1.
Crespo, Chucka and Zak Skinner tallied hits on the day for the Knights. Crespo finished 1-for-3 with a double to earn Jax Classic All-Tournament Team honors for the Black and Gold. For the tournament, the third baseman hit an even .500 with two doubles, two runs batted in and a run scored. Curiel and Brown paced LSU on the day by driving in three runs apiece and tallying five combined hits.
The Black and Gold finished their first appearance in the Live Like Lou Jax Classic with a 1-2 record. UCF first picked up a 4-2 come-from-behind extra-inning victory over Notre Dame in the opener before falling to Indiana and No. 1 LSU over its final two games of the event.
“This is a really well-run event. It kind of has a regional feel to it is truly an elite tournament. We were fortunate to be a part of it,” Wallace concluded.
The Knights will close a five-game road trip with a midweek game at Jacksonville University on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at John Sessions Stadium. Following Tuesday’s contest, UCF will return John Euliano Park to open a 12-game homestand beginning next weekend when it welcomes South Florida to town for a three-game series beginning Friday.