Johnson proved himself in West, now is out to be SEC’s best

In his first season at LSU, he smashed any notion he would be overmatched in a league that has produced three straight national champions and eight of the last 13.

The Tigers won 40 games, had their first top-four finish in the SEC since 2017 and reached an NCAA regional final.

Johnson was just getting started.

LSU signed the nation’s best recruiting class, brought in the top-rated group of transfers and has back the favorite to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 MLB draft in center fielder Dylan Crews.

The Tigers will open the season at home Friday night against Western Michigan as the consensus No. 1 team in the polls, the first time since 2019 they’ve had a top preseason ranking.

Any season not ending with LSU among the eight teams playing in the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, is a disappointment to the Tigers’ passionate fans. That’s the minimum expectation this year.

“I’m not a betting man, but if you want to bet, I would imagine they’re going to be one of those eight hot teams in Omaha and if they stay hot they’ll win the whole darn thing,” said Andy Lopez, a College Baseball Hall of Fame coach and Pac-12 Network analyst who was Johnson’s predecessor at Arizona.

Johnson made two CWS appearances in six seasons at Arizona before he became the third coach to move from the West Coast to the SEC. The first two were Lopez and Dave Serrano.

Lopez was hired by Florida three years after he won the 1992 national title at Pepperdine. He led the Gators to two CWS appearances over seven seasons. He spent the last 14 years of his career at Arizona, winning the 2012 national championship before he retired in 2015. Johnson succeeded him in Tucson and the two are friends.

Serrano left Cal State Fullerton after the 2011 season and coached Tennessee six years, never finishing higher than fifth in the SEC East or making an NCAA Tournament.

The 45-year-old Johnson grew up in the Northern California town of Oroville, played at Point Loma Nazarene in San Diego and worked his way up the coaching ranks from assistant at San Diego to head coach at Nevada and Arizona.

“I was very content at Arizona and really believed that was going to be my lifetime job,” Johnson said. “I loved those players and what we accomplished there and was very comfortable.”

As a player and young coach, Johnson followed the Tigers and iconic coach Skip Bertman from afar as they won five national titles from 1991 to 2000.

“For me, a lot is made out of the West Coast-to-the-South thing,” Johnson said. “In reality, coaching is coaching, recruiting is recruiting, and so I just wanted to test myself against the best players, the best coaches, the best programs in college baseball right now.”

Johnson, who will earn $1.25 million in the second year of his five-year contract, said his plan was to build for 2023. He used year one to identify the program’s greatest needs and addressed them in recruiting and through the transfer portal.

Starting pitching was the first concern. Johnson said the 2022 rotation, by metrics he and his staff use, ranked 11th out of 14 in the SEC.

Johnson hired pitching coach Wes Johnson away from the Minnesota Twins and signed elite transfers in Paul Skenes (Air Force), Thatcher Hurd (UCLA) and Christian Little (Vanderbilt). Right-handers Chase Shores and Aiden Moffett and lefty Griffin Herring are the top freshman arms.

The portal also yielded Tommy White, who hit 27 homers as a freshman for North Carolina State and will take over at third for first-round draft pick Jacob Berry.

Johnson acknowledged his biggest adjustment in the move to LSU was dealing with the intense fan and media interest. Shortly after he took the job, he asked Lopez about the SEC culture.

Lopez said the anecdote he offered Johnson applies today as much as it did 30 years ago.

Lopez told of the reception his Gators received as they got off the bus for the first game of a three-game series at LSU. To get to the clubhouse, the visitors had to walk through a gantlet of fans in purple and gold holding brooms and warning the Gators they were going to get swept.

“And this is Friday at 3 in the afternoon,” Lopez said. “Dang, these people are serious here. For a kid who wants to be in that environment and thrives in it, it kind of gets you juiced. I think a guy like Jay Johnson thrives in it.”