Tre' Morgan grabbed the ball for the final out, tucked it in his back left pocket, flung his glove behind him and raced across the infield looking for someone to dogpile with.
After a few moments unbridled joy, it was time for “the photo.”
Back at the start of the season, coach Jay Johnson told his LSU baseball team they would take a picture after each victory.
The season’s 48th photo, the one after he got dunked by two coolers full of water and sports drink and a hug from one of his best friends in coaching, Kentucky coach Nick Mingione, is one Johnson is going to want to frame and hang on his office wall.
Picture this: After six years (five misses and a pandemic), an agonizing wait by LSU standards, the Tigers are going back to the College World Series.
They got halfway to Omaha on Saturday night by putting all of their dazzling talent on display. Paul Skenes was as dominant as could be, going 7 2/3 innings of a 14-0 shutout victory as LSU hammered a season-high six home runs, two each by Morgan and Tommy White.
Sunday, the Tigers had to get the rest of the way there. They did it with an 8-3 win that showed their mental toughness and grit to grind out the kind of win that you just knew they’d have to get against a tough, gritty, “You’re going to have to take it from us because we’re not going to hand it to you” Kentucky team.
You don’t get to Omaha unless you can win all sorts of ways. Hitting, pitching, defense, mental toughness. The Tigers have handled all comers this season, including the crushing weight of this program’s tradition and enormous expectations.
Like the LSU women’s basketball team earlier this spring, this trip back to Omaha comes in the second year under the Tigers’ new coach. Like Kim Mulkey, Johnson brought a focus and intensity to the program that one wouldn’t say had been lacking, but that had to be resharpened. No one knows that better than Mingione.
“Jay Johnson is an amazing coach,” Mingione said. “Everywhere that guy goes they win. And they win championships.
“LSU is lucky to have him.”
Now, like the basketball team did, the goal shifts to the ultimate prize: Pursuit of the program’s seventh national championship and first since 2009.
For a moment, all that was put on hold. In the moment, the Tigers got to do something they hadn’t done since winning a super regional here in 2017: a victory lap around Alex Box Stadium with high fives for their giddy fans.
Just protect that right arm, Paul Skenes. It’s going to be needed to pitch Saturday in Omaha against the winner of Monday’s Game 3 in the Hattiesburg super regional between Tennessee and Southern Miss. Oh, the satisfaction there must be of waiting for a team to have to win its way to play you.
“So proud of this team,” Johnson said in the postgame news conference, wearing a smile that will probably take days to wear off. “Coming here was a big move, personally and professionally. I just had a vision of what tonight would look like. I wanted these guys to experience that so bad. This is about the players.
“There’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears in the 700-some days we’ve been here. They’re champions, and we get to go to Omaha and chase a national championship.”
LSU avoided what would have been its own stomach-knotting Game 3 by taking down UK in two. But for a long time Sunday it looked like the super regional would follow the script of the teams’ regular-season series here in April.
LSU run-ruled UK 16-6 in the opener then lost the second game 13-10. The Tigers won the series finale, but it was a white-knuckled 7-6 affair.
The Tigers didn’t need the anxiety. The better team in the balance of this super regional left nothing to chance with the coin-flip nature of a one-game scenario. It all seemed a bit scripted in the mind of Johnson, whose team got All-American Dylan Crews to come up with the bases loaded in the top of the ninth clinging to a 5-3 lead.
After a wild pitch scored a run, Crews lined a two-run double to left. LSU led 8-3 and everyone, probably the Wildcats included, knew the Tigers wouldn’t blow it.
“It was awesome,” Crews said of the moment, surely the last at-bat at The Box for the man some expect to be the No. 1 pick in next month's major league draft.
Of course, there is more work to be done.
The venue changes. The road to Omaha is now here. The program that bills itself the powerhouse of college baseball now aims at another national title.
Surely they can imagine that celebration even now.