| After falling in the opening game of the series 6-5 Thursday night at South Carolina, the LSU Tigers needed to bounce back big time if they were to salvage the series. They turned to some dependable, dominant weapons to make that happen: the pitching arm of Kade Anderson, and the bats of Jared Jones and Ethan Frey. Anderson struck out nine over 6.2 innings, Jones blasted two home runs and Frey another as No. 1-ranked LSU subdued pesky South Carolina 8-1 to square the series at a game apiece. Jones reached a pretty significant career milestone along the way as well. "Offensively, we did a little everything," LSU coach Jay Johnson said. "We had good plate discipline, got some free bases, drove the baseball." Check out the details of LSU's series finale, when it is and how to watch. The LSU softball team had a similar experience to the baseball team from Thursday in their regional opener at Tiger Park. LSU suffered a stunning upset loss to the No. 4 seed in the regional, SLU, 4-3. The defeat knocks the Tigers, the No. 10 national seed, into a must win or else loser's bracket game Saturday afternoon against UConn. SLU plays Nebraska in the winner's bracket game at noon Saturday, with the loser of that game awaiting the winner of LSU-SLU on Saturday night. Back to baseball where our Koki Riley — who is providing exclusive coverage of the LSU baseball team on the road as he has all season (shameless plug) — has a feature on the Tigers' baserunning rules ... according to the Book of Johnson. Finally, the LSU women's golf team played Round 1 of the NCAA Championships out in Carlsbad, California, where one of the Tigers' seniors is in the hunt for individual medalist honors. That's all for today, folks. Enjoy your sports weekend and we'll do this again next week. Scott Rabalais | 