LSU survived a subpar performance from Louis Coleman, who did not throw enough strikes and threw the ball up in the strike zone.  How many ground ball outs did we get from Coleman?  If it was more than 3, I would be surprised.

We survived a 10 strikeout performance from Chance Ruffin, who was spectacular until he a) cramped and b) ran into a little trouble in the 6th and they decided to bring in Austin Wood to finish off Jared Mitchell.

We survived Ryan Schimpf striking out twice without swinging the bat in either trip to the plate.

We survived our starting center fielder cramping up.

We survived what I thought  were three bad coaching decisions:  a) the decision not to start Leon Landry in place of Sean Ochinko, b) the decision to bring Coleman back out in the 7th inning, and c) the decision to pinch run Landry for Ochinko in the 9th when Landry would have made a great pinch hitter for Nola a couple batters later.  None of those decisions worked out for us, and all were questioned at the time.  One of Texas's home runs barely cleared the fence and Landry may have been able to get it.  Ochinko did not hit.  Coleman gave up a home run in the 7th.  Hanover was unable to do anything productive in place of Nola.

We did it with 5 innings of no-hit baseball from the relief pitchers.  One inning from Chad Jones; one inning from Paul Bertuccini, and 3 great innings from Matty Ott, all to give us a chance to get two runs with two outs in the top of the 9th to tie it up, and then a run in the 11th to take the lead, and then finally to hold the lead through the bottom of the 11th.

If there was an offensive star of the game, it was DJ Lemahieu, who had 3 RBI on the night with a home run and the aforementioned 2-out 9th inning double.  Special mention also must go to Jared Mitchell, who hit the ball hard almost every time up to the plate, and who had 2 RBI of his own.  And of course, Mikie Mahtook got the game winning RBI.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, and we got timely hitting in exactly the right spot, with Mitchell's 2-run triple and Lemahieu's 2-run double, even though we hit poorly for much of the game.

Now we just need to get one more.  I think we need to go Ross/Bradshaw in Game 2 and save Ranaudo for a Game 3 when he would be better rested.