Guessing Game

LSU proves portal isn’t a sure thing

By Jim Gazzolo

It has been a tough couple of weeks for the LSU baseball team.

The Tigers enter the weekend having lost six straight Southeastern Conference games as they are set to play at Mississippi State. They are 6-12 in the league and 24-18 overall.

That’s good for 14th place in the conference, not where anybody thought the defending champs would be at this time. And they just lost perhaps their best player as Sulphur’s Jake Brown had hand surgery earlier this week.

Brown, a junior, could return next season to LSU or see where he goes in this summer’s Major League draft. 

“That’s a guy you wish you could coach forever,” said LSU head coach Jay Johnson. “And he’ll make a Major League team really happy in the draft. I can’t say enough good things about him. That was a gut punch.”

Brown was a big part of last year’s team during the College World Series. It was believed that he, along with what some considered the best recruiting transfer portal class in the nation, would leave the Tigers title contenders once more.

Yet this year is a perfect lesson to all college coaches and fans: the portal is no guarantee of greatness.

Lane Kiffin might want to take notice.

Johnson called out his lineup recently, saying not all of the newcomers were a good fit for LSU. Apparently, even in the portal/NIL world, team culture and chemistry still matter. 

For some, it’s good to know that you just can’t buy championships.

Of course, LSU could still make a postseason run and have all this work out in the end, but the hill the Tigers will need to climb is a giant one at this point. The loss of Brown will make that climb just that much tougher.

To his credit, Johnson has also taken some of the blame for this team’s struggles.

“I made some mistakes in constructing the team and trying to replace two guys that were irreplaceable,” Johnson said. “We should have looked for replacing them through guys that were already in the program.”

This happens to all teams at some point. LSU football struggled despite having what many called a great year in the portal last season. It cost Brian Kelly his job. 

That won’t be the case with Johnson; instead, it will be a great learning experience for everyone about the world of college sports. 

Every team is new every year, and sometimes you don’t know what exactly you are getting. 

Jim Gazzolo is a freelance writer who covers sports in Southwest Louisiana. He is also the host of Poke Nation, which airs weekly on CBS Lake Charles.