The air of invincibility that had surrounded McNeese baseball for the better part of a month evaporated under the bright lights of Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge on Tuesday night. LSU, hungry to reassert itself after a rocky stretch, brought McNeese’s impressive 12-game winning streak to a screeching halt with a dominant 10-3 victory that reminded everyone why the Tigers are one of college baseball’s perennial powerhouses.
For McNeese, the loss marked the end of a magical stretch that had captivated the program and turned heads well beyond Lake Charles. The Cowboys entered the game having not tasted defeat since mid-March, stringing together a dozen consecutive wins and surging to the top of the Southland Conference standings. That stretch included a number of blowout victories, late-inning heroics, and breakout performances that seemed to suggest McNeese was building something special this season.
But LSU posed a different kind of challenge—a battle-tested SEC squad with a roster loaded with talent, experience, and the kind of depth few mid-major programs can match. The Tigers made that gap painfully clear early and often on Tuesday night.
LSU didn’t waste any time asserting itself. The Tigers plated two runs in the bottom of the first inning, capitalizing on a pair of McNeese errors and a sharply hit double by sophomore outfielder Josh Pearson. The tone was set from the jump: this wouldn’t be the kind of game McNeese had gotten used to dominating during their win streak.
The Cowboys fought back in the top of the second with a solo homer from junior catcher Brad Burckel, a blast that temporarily cut the deficit in half and brought a jolt of energy to the McNeese dugout. But that momentum proved fleeting.
LSU answered in the bottom half of the frame with three more runs, aided by a costly walk and a misplayed fly ball that extended the inning. Sophomore Jared Jones punished the mistake with a two-run triple that bounced off the wall in right-center field, blowing the game wide open and forcing McNeese starter Grant Rogers to exit after just 1.2 innings of work. It was one of the shortest outings of Rogers’ otherwise stellar season.
From there, LSU never looked back. The Tigers added insurance runs in the fourth, sixth, and eighth innings, all while holding McNeese to just five hits on the night. LSU’s bullpen, which had struggled mightily in recent weeks, looked rejuvenated, striking out nine batters and walking just one over the final six innings.
Despite the loss, McNeese head coach Justin Hill remained upbeat about his team’s performance and outlook. “Look, we’ve been on a great run,” Hill said after the game. “This is a tough place to play against a team with as much talent as LSU. I’m proud of the way our guys competed. We didn’t play our cleanest baseball tonight, and against a team like that, it’s going to show.”
Indeed, Tuesday night exposed some of the cracks that had been hidden during McNeese’s winning streak. The Cowboys committed three errors, walked six batters, and struggled to generate offense against LSU’s deep pitching staff. Burckel’s home run was one of the few offensive highlights, as McNeese failed to string together consecutive hits until the ninth inning, when they scored two late runs against LSU’s third reliever of the night.
Those late runs prevented a complete blowout and allowed the Cowboys to salvage a bit of pride, but they did little to change the outcome—or the reality that McNeese’s streak had come to an end in emphatic fashion.
Still, the broader context of McNeese’s recent success can’t be ignored. The Cowboys now sit at 27-10 on the season, with a 9-3 mark in Southland Conference play. They’ve climbed steadily in the RPI rankings and have begun drawing attention as a potential at-large bid candidate should they stumble in the conference tournament. That kind of national conversation would have been unthinkable a year ago, but Hill and his staff have transformed this roster into one of the most disciplined and dangerous mid-major squads in the country.
Much of that transformation can be traced to the emergence of Rogers as a true ace, the consistency of Burckel and Payton Harden in the lineup, and a bullpen that—Tuesday night notwithstanding—has been among the most efficient in the conference. McNeese has also benefited from aggressive baserunning and timely hitting, the kind of small-ball execution that can wear opponents down over nine innings.
But in Baton Rouge, LSU flipped that script. The Tigers played fast, loose, and confident, flashing leather in the field and pounding extra-base hits in big moments. For LSU, the win was equally significant—snapping a minor two-game skid and providing some much-needed momentum heading into the meat of their SEC schedule. The Tigers improved to 24-13 with the win and were able to showcase their pitching depth with six different arms taking the mound.
After the game, LSU head coach Jay Johnson praised McNeese and the job Hill has done with the Cowboys program. “That’s a really well-coached team. They came in here hot, playing as well as anyone in the country,” Johnson said. “We knew we’d have to bring our best. I thought our guys responded with a lot of focus tonight. It was a big win for us.”
For McNeese, the focus now turns to how they respond. With conference play resuming this weekend, the Cowboys return to a more familiar setting—one where they’ve been nearly unbeatable over the last month. Hill emphasized that the team wouldn’t let the loss linger, instead using it as a learning opportunity as they continue to chase their postseason goals.
“This group is resilient,” Hill said. “They’ve been through adversity before. One game doesn’t define us. We’ve got a lot of baseball left to play, and we know who we are.”
That sense of identity has been central to McNeese’s rise. The Cowboys play with a chip on their shoulder, fully aware of the perception gap that exists between programs like theirs and SEC bluebloods like LSU. Tuesday night may have been a humbling experience, but it also reinforced just how far McNeese has come—and how much further they can go.
For a program that hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2021, this season has all the makings of a breakthrough. The schedule sets up favorably the rest of the way, with several key home series against conference foes and a couple of winnable midweek matchups that could bolster their resume.
The challenge now will be to maintain the momentum they built during the 12-game winning streak, even in the face of a reality check like the one delivered in Baton Rouge. Every team, no matter how hot, runs into a wall at some point. The good ones learn from it and get better.
Burckel, who has emerged as one of the team’s emotional leaders, put it simply: “We lost to a really good team tonight. It stings. But it doesn’t change what we’ve done, and it doesn’t change what we believe we can still do.”
That belief—rooted in weeks of success, countless hours of work, and a roster full of battle-tested competitors—remains McNeese’s most important asset as they head into the final stretch of the regular season. The streak may be over, but the season is far from finished.
And if Tuesday night’s loss serves as a turning point rather than a derailment, the Cowboys may look back on it not as the end of something special, but as the moment that sharpened their edge just in time for the games that matter most.