HOOVER, Ala. — Late Tuesday night under the lights at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, the defending NCAA national champion LSU Tigers survived a 2-1 grind into the eighth inning, watched shortstop Steven Milam — the player his own teammates call “Playoff Steve” — drive a two-run home run to right field that opened the game up, and walked off with a 6-2 win over the No. 11 seed Oklahoma Sooners to advance to a Wednesday second-round matchup with No. 6 Auburn.
For the No. 14 seed Tigers, the win extends a tournament that — given the seeding — was always going to require winning multiple games on the unforgiving side of the bracket. For the Oklahoma Sooners, in their first SEC Tournament appearance after moving over from the Big 12 a year ago, the loss ends their league postseason debut after one game.
LSU is now scheduled to face Auburn on Wednesday, May 20 at 9 p.m. ET on the SEC Network — the final game of Day 2 in Hoover.
Tigers win! Tigers win! pic.twitter.com/6U6zSON38l
— LSU Baseball (@LSUbaseball) May 20, 2026
Playoff Steve
LSU led 4-2 through seven innings. Oklahoma had not lost contact. Then catcher Cade Arrambide singled up the middle to open the eighth. Two outs later, with Arrambide still on first, Milam stepped in against Oklahoma right-hander Jackson Cleveland and turned on a 3-1 pitch, driving it over the right field wall for a two-run home run to extend LSU’s lead to 6-2.
The label was already attached. Sophomore Derek Curiel — speaking with World Baseball Network correspondent Matt Tallarini in a postgame interview after going 3-for-5 with two doubles down the left-field line — laid out the case for his shortstop.
“Steven Milam has been legit for us all year. I think he’s the best shortstop in the country,” Curiel said. “He’s got the best glove. And he comes through when it matters. We call him Playoff Steve for a reason. He owns this place, Hoover, and he also owns Omaha. There’s no one I’d rather have up in the big situation than Steven Milam. And there’s no one I’d want the ball hit to besides Steven Milam.”
Milam finished 1-for-3 with the home run, a walk, two RBI, and a run scored.
Curiel comes through
Beyond Milam’s eighth-inning blow, Curiel was the day’s offensive engine. The Top 100 MLB Pipeline prospect we flagged as a name to watch in our No. 13-16 preview finished 3-for-5 with two doubles down the left-field line.
His first double came in the top of the fifth, on the inning that broke the game open. With LSU trailing 1-0 after an unearned Oklahoma run in the fourth, Mason Braun was hit by a pitch leading off, Omar Serna Jr. singled, and then Curiel doubled to score Braun and tie the game 1-1. Two batters later — after Cade Arrambide struck out — Milam reached on a fielder’s choice that should have ended the inning, but a throwing error by Oklahoma third baseman Camden Johnson scored Curiel and brought Serna Jr. around to score unearned, giving LSU a 3-1 lead it would never relinquish.
For Curiel, postgame, the win was about the math of the tournament.
“We know our backs are on the wall,” he said. “We know if it’s winter, go home. If we lose, our season’s over. We’ve got to take it a game at a time. Our goal is obviously to win five here in Hoover, but we can’t do that if we don’t win game two tomorrow. For a lot of guys, this might be the last time they wear an LSU jersey. Some guys, the last time they maybe play baseball. So it means a lot, and we’re going to give everything we’ve got.”
The “win five” framing matters. LSU’s path through the loser’s bracket to the SEC championship would require five tournament wins, starting with Tuesday’s. That math is brutal on pitching staffs. Whether Jay Johnson and his staff have the arms to navigate it is the question that defines the Tigers’ next six days.
Chef's Kiss All The Way Around ?@ArrambideCade x @Monster_Milam99 pic.twitter.com/34AuSQFu5z
— LSU Baseball (@LSUbaseball) May 20, 2026
The arms held up
Tuesday night’s pitching ledger gave reason for optimism. LSU starter Grant Fontenot went 2.1 innings, allowing three hits, one earned run, one walk, and one strikeout on 36 pitches. The early hook was strategic — Jay Johnson typically pulls the trigger fast in tournament settings when it means getting his bullpen leverage early.
Gavin Guidry took the ball next and was the pitcher of the game. Across 3.1 innings of relief, Guidry allowed two hits, one unearned run, two walks, and struck out six on 59 pitches. He bridged the middle innings while LSU’s offense found its footing in the fifth, then handed off to Deven Sheerin, who closed it down with 2.2 innings of one-hit, two-strikeout, scoreless relief.
Curiel, on Guidry: “Gavin Guidry has been here for four years. He closed out the national championship in 2025. He knows what he’s doing up there. He is in full control, and he is a true competitor. He’s probably going to be able to pitch tomorrow if Jay needs him — that’s his type of mentality. He doesn’t care. And this might be his last time playing here at LSU, so he’s going to go ball to wall.”
That’s a senior arm who has been through the Omaha run, doing in May 2026 what he did in June 2025 — long relief at high leverage.
The Sooner errors
Oklahoma helped LSU’s win along with three errors. The biggest contribution came in the fifth, when Camden Johnson’s throwing error at third turned a should-have-been-out into two LSU runs. The fourth inning gave up a run on its own pair of defensive miscues, including a wild pitch on a Tockey strikeout that allowed Brock to score from third, unearned.
The Sooners’ offense never produced an extra-base hit on the night. Six singles total. They drew four walks. With runners in scoring position, they went 0-for-7. Camden Johnson drew a walk and drove in Oklahoma’s lone earned run; Brendan Brock scored Oklahoma’s only other run on the wild-pitch/error sequence.
Skip Johnson’s first SEC Tournament season concluded with a final stat line that won’t get the Sooners into the NCAA Tournament conversation: a one-and-done first-round exit, the inability to capitalize on chances, and a young pitching staff that gave up Milam’s eighth-inning blast.
Curiel’s path to LSU
For Curiel — a California native, a 2023 U-18 USA Baseball World Cup veteran who batted leadoff and played center field for Team USA in Taiwan — the journey to Tuesday’s win started with an older teammate.
“Last year, Ethan Fry,” Curiel said when asked who has helped him most through two seasons at LSU. “Ethan Fry was obviously a veteran last year. Junior, got drafted in the third round, a big piece of our national championship team. He welcomed me with open arms. He kind of just taught me how to do it. Obviously I was a high school kid, 18 years old coming into college. He showed me the ropes. College is a little different. For me, being from California, it’s a little bit different in the south, so just getting to gel with the guys was a little bit different for me too at first. But he helped me fit right in. I made it my own. I appreciate him a lot.”
On Jay Johnson, who recruited him to Baton Rouge: “Coach Johnson is the reason I came to LSU. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been doing it for a long time. Back when he was at U of A, he started in San Diego. He coached Kris Bryant, Dylan Crews, Paul Skenes. Guys who have won MVPs in the big leagues. We all trust what he’s saying. He’s a great baseball manager and a great human being. He’s helped us with a lot. He’s certainly helped me with a lot, growing up as a baseball player in many ways. There’s no one I’d rather play for than Jay Johnson.”
The Bryant-Crews-Skenes lineage is real. Jay Johnson coached Crews and Skenes to a national title in 2023; he recruited and developed Crews into the No. 2 overall MLB Draft pick. Curiel, a sophomore, fits the same profile: the international, identity-forward player Johnson has built LSU’s recent dynasties around.
On the 2025 championship team specifically, and what set it apart: “We just never gave up. We had so many come-from-behind victories. We had so many games that got delayed because of weather, and we were just never out of it. You couldn’t do anything to throw us off our game. We were always ready to compete, whether we were down by eight or it was raining and we were playing at one in the morning. Our team just fought till the very last second. We were not going to go down without throwing three big haymakers at you.”
What’s next
LSU plays Auburn at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday on the SEC Network. The Tigers from Auburn, the No. 6 seed at 36-21 (16-14 SEC) under second-year head coach Butch Thompson, get LSU on what amounts to extra rest after a first-round bye. The matchup pits two national-title programs from very different recent eras — LSU coming off the 2025 championship, Auburn last in the College World Series in 2019.
For Oklahoma, the season concludes here. Selection Monday airs at 12 p.m. ET on Monday, May 25 on ESPN2.
The grind
Tuesday’s four-game first round ran for nearly 12 hours straight at the same field. By the time Milam’s eighth-inning home run touched the right-field wall just before 11 p.m. CT, the Hoover Met crowd had cycled through a full day of orange, garnet, light blue, navy, purple, and the deep reds and blacks of seven SEC programs. The grounds crew had worked nonstop. The vendors had rotated shifts.
By Wednesday morning, the same field, the same vendors, and many of the same fans will be back in their seats for Game 5: Missouri vs. Mississippi State, 10:30 a.m. ET. The single-elimination format compresses six days into one nonstop tournament, and Tuesday night’s late finish means LSU’s overworked bullpen now has roughly 22 hours before Auburn.
By the Numbers
Score: LSU 6, Oklahoma 2 (FINAL)
Hits: LSU 11, Oklahoma 6
Errors: LSU 2, Oklahoma 3
Left on base: LSU 12, Oklahoma 8
LSU pitching: Grant Fontenot 2.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 36 pitches. Gavin Guidry (W) 3.1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 59 pitches. Deven Sheerin 2.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, [PENDING — final pitch count, likely ~30].
Oklahoma pitching: Gavyn Jones 2.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 34 pitches. Nick Wesloski 2.0 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 40 pitches. LJ Mercurius (L) 2.0 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 43 pitches. Jason Bodin 0.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 19 pitches. Nate Smithburg 0.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 8 pitches. Jackson Cleveland 1.0 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 23 pitches.
LSU hitting leaders: Derek Curiel 3-for-5, 2 2B, 1 RBI, 1 R. Steven Milam 1-for-3, HR, 2 RBI, 1 R, 1 BB. Mason Braun 1-for-3, 1 R, 1 BB, 1 HBP. Cade Arrambide 1-for-4, 1 R, 1 BB. Brayden Simpson 2-for-3 (PH, then in to DH). John Pearson 1-for-3, 2 BB.
Oklahoma hitting leaders: Camden Johnson 1-for-3, 1 RBI, 1 BB. Deiten LaChance 1-for-4 (1 SB). Trey Gambill 1-for-3. Dasan Harris 1-for-3. Kyle Branch 1-for-3, 1 R. Jason Walk 1-for-4.
ABS challenges: Each team initiated two challenges. LSU upheld one (Steven Milam HBP, top of the 1st) and lost one (caught-stealing call upheld in the bottom of the 4th). Oklahoma confirmed one ball call (1-2 pitch to Curiel, top of the 6th) and successfully overturned one ball-to-strike (3-2 pitch to Stanfield, top of the 7th — Stanfield struck out looking).
For More on the 2026 SEC Tournament
- Game 3 Recap: Tennessee 11, South Carolina 6
- Game 2 Recap: Vanderbilt 8, Kentucky 5
- Game 1 Recap: Missouri 10, Ole Miss 8
- How to Watch the 2026 SEC Baseball Tournament
- 2026 SEC Tournament Preview: Seeds No. 1-4
- 2026 SEC Tournament Preview: Seeds No. 5-8
- 2026 SEC Tournament Preview: Seeds No. 9-12
- 2026 SEC Tournament Preview: Seeds No. 13-16
2026 SEC Baseball Tournament Schedule
All times Eastern. Second game of each session begins approximately 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first.
Tuesday, May 19 — First Round (SEC Network)
Game 1: No. 9 Ole Miss vs. No. 16 Missouri — 10:30 a.m. (Missouri 10, Ole Miss 8 — FINAL)
Game 2: No. 12 Vanderbilt vs. No. 13 Kentucky — 2 p.m. (Vanderbilt 8, Kentucky 5 — FINAL)
Game 3: No. 10 Tennessee vs. No. 15 South Carolina — 5:30 p.m. (Tennessee 11, South Carolina 6 — FINAL)
Game 4: No. 11 Oklahoma vs. No. 14 LSU — 9 p.m. (LSU 6, Oklahoma 2 — FINAL)
Wednesday, May 20 — Second Round (SEC Network)
Game 5: Missouri vs. No. 8 Mississippi State — 10:30 a.m.
Game 6: Vanderbilt vs. No. 5 Florida — 2 p.m.
Game 7: Tennessee vs. No. 7 Arkansas — 5:30 p.m.
Game 8: LSU vs. No. 6 Auburn — 9 p.m.
Thursday, May 21 — Quarterfinals (SEC Network)
Game 9: Winner Game 5 vs. No. 1 Georgia — 4 p.m.
Game 10: Winner Game 6 vs. No. 4 Alabama — 8 p.m.
Friday, May 22 — Quarterfinals (SEC Network)
Game 11: Winner Game 7 vs. No. 2 Texas — 4 p.m.
Game 12: Winner Game 8 vs. No. 3 Texas A&M — 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 23 — Semifinals (SEC Network)
Game 13: Winner Game 9 vs. Winner Game 10 — 1 p.m.
Game 14: Winner Game 11 vs. Winner Game 12 — 5 p.m.
Sunday, May 24 — Championship (ABC)
Game 15: Winner Game 13 vs. Winner Game 14 — 2 p.m.
