Take a bow, Scott Woodward.
Heck, take a Jell-O shot, too — one more for the road to add to the record-setting 64,000-plus shots LSU fans consumed in Omaha over the past 10 days.
While you’re at it, go ahead and start planning another parade on campus, just like the one you did in April.
For the second time in three months, a national championship trophy is headed to Baton Rouge.
Woodward, hired as LSU’s athletic director in 2019, delivered the coaches. And the coaches have delivered the results.
First, Kim Mulkey guided the LSU women’s basketball team to the first championship in program history three months ago, doing so in Year 2 on the job.
Jay Johnson, also in his second year, followed it up Monday night by leading the Tigers to their seventh baseball title and first since 2009 with an 18-4 beatdown of Florida in Game 3 of the College World Series finals.
This was a fitting farewell for a team featuring some of the greatest players to ever wear an LSU uniform. They made sure their last time will be remembered forever, putting themselves right beside those Tiger teams that won it all in 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2009.
Much like that 2009 team, this year’s group had to win Game 3 after losing Game 2.
That doesn’t usually happen.
Since 2003, when the College World Series went to a best-of-three championship series format, 10 series have gone to a third game, and the Game 2 winner went on to win the Game 3 seven times.
But those teams weren’t facing a team quite as resilient as these 2023 Tigers, who weren’t fazed at all by the record-setting 24-4 loss they suffered Sunday.
LSU finished the season the same way it started it: as the No. 1 team in all of college baseball.
There were some road bumps along the way that caused the Tigers to lose their preseason No. 1 ranking in May.
When it mattered the most, though, the Tigers came through, dogpiling on the infield of Charles Schwab Field, which was more like Alex Box Stadium Midwest.
There were plenty of heroes on this unforgettable run.
There was a pitching staff that proved that Paul Skenes didn’t have to carry the load by himself. There was defensive gems by Tre’ Morgan and Josh Pearson that helped LSU make it this far in the first play. Tommy White’s walk-off homer against Wake Forest.
There was Dylan Crews crashing into the center-field wall for a catch Monday, giving the fans one last highlight to cap his stellar career.
And you can’t forget about Jordan Thompson. The shortstop, who had just one hit in Omaha before Monday, drove in LSU’s first run in the second inning to get the scoring barrage started.
But the biggest hero was Game 3 starting pitcher Thatcher Hurd, who cooled off those scorching-hot Gator bats from the day before. Hurd went seven innings and allowed just two hits, and the LSU offense did the rest to make sure the ace, Skenes, wasn’t even needed.
Woodward had to be one of the proudest people watching.
It’s not often that athletic directors get to celebrate two national championships in the same year.
This was just the fourth time it’s ever happened in the four major sports (football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball). The only other schools to accomplish the feat were UConn (men and women’s basketball in 2003-04), Florida (football and men’s basketball in 2006-07) and UConn again (men and women’s basketball in 2013-14).
Now you can add LSU to that list after Johnson’s Tigers put an exclamation point on one of the best athletic years in school history — especially when you consider that Brian Kelly, also a Woodward hire, led the football team to the Southeastern Conference championship game in his first season this fall. It’s Year 2 for you, Coach Kelly. The bar has been set high.
There are reasons aplenty to be optimistic that more celebrations like the one in Omaha on Monday night are on the horizon.
Johnson himself said it best in an interview after the game:
“Right people. Right place. Right time.”
Everyone wearing purple and gold should thank Woodward for that.
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