BUILT TO LAST

In trying for a third title in four years, LSU takes aim at history under coach Jay Johnson

- by JACOB RUDNER

On a bus rolling away from Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, the celebration finally quieted enough for clarity to arrive.

Jay Johnson sat near the front, exhaustion settling in after the longest and loudest season of his life, when he realized something essential was already gone. Dylan Crews was sitting behind him, where he always sat. Gavin Dugas, too. And Johnson knew he would never coach either of them again.

That is the paradox at the center of modern college baseball dominance.

You build something powerful enough to win a national championship, and in the same moment, it starts dissolving. The best teams are temporary by design. The best programs are not.

Johnson understood that long before LSU lifted the trophy in 2023, long before it climbed back to the top again in 2025 and long before the Tigers put themselves on the brink of something rarer still. If LSU wins the 2026 national championship, it would become just the second program in college baseball history to capture three titles in four years.

The word dynasty hovers nearby. Johnson refuses to use it.

When he arrived in Baton Rouge ahead of the 2022 season, he did not inherit a blank canvas. LSU already had the weight that comes with being the state's professional baseball team in everything but name. The crowds were there. The expectations were immovable. The tradition was alive. What he inherited instead was imbalance.

There were position players he believed in immediately, a core that could be shaped and sharpened over two seasons. On the mound, there was no such runway.

"On the pitching side of it," Johnson said, it was a complete rebuild.”

That became the axis of everything that followed.

Johnson had seen the college game shifting before LSU ever called.