COLUMBIA, Mo. — Mizzou Baseball (25-12-1, 7-7-1 SEC) improved to 3-0 in Southeastern Conference series at Taylor Stadium this season following an 11-5 victory Sunday against No. 8 LSU.
Sunday marked Mizzou's first all-time series triumph over LSU. Entering play this weekend, Mizzou only possessed a 1-14 record all-time against the Tigers. This season in Columbia, Mizzou now holds SEC series victories over No. 20 Ole Miss (March 22-24), Kentucky (April 5-7) and LSU.
ALL-TIME STARTING NINES: Stanford | USC | UCLA | Virginia | Michigan St.
Mizzou also earned its fifth top 25 nationally ranked win of the season. All five of those victories have occurred in the last month of play with four of them taking place at Taylor Stadium.
🎥 HIGHLIGHTS l #Mizzou improves to 7-0 this season in @art_joven18 starts, as the host Tigers produce their SEC single-game season-best 11 runs on 14 hits#MIZ #ShowMe #C2E 🐯⚾️ pic.twitter.com/IKyjkXFrJN
— Mizzou Baseball (@MizzouBaseball) April 14, 2019
Junior LHP Art Joven made his first career SEC start Sunday and delivered a strong outing. Joven didn't allow a hit until the sixth inning and limited LSU to two runs (both unearned) on three hits while striking out six batters.
Offensively, coach Steve Bieser saw fantastic production up and down the lineup. All nine Tiger batters recorded at least one hit, while eight batters produced a run scored and five individuals tallied an RBI. Mizzou's 11 runs scored and 14 hits both were single-game season-highs in an SEC matchup this season.
🔊 SOUND OF THE GAME | Senior 1B @tonio_balonio got the party started Sunday with a 3-run shot in the 2nd inning!#MIZ #ShowMe #C2E 🐯⚾️ pic.twitter.com/kNsve8VOPV
— Mizzou Baseball (@MizzouBaseball) April 14, 2019
From head coach Steve Bieser
On Misner's mammoth home run in the eighth inning…
"Yeah, we're going to have to go to Trackman to find out which one was longer. Today's win didn't hurt that ball. He got into a ball just about as good as you can get into a ball. You saw LSU creeping back into the game and to put two more runs back on the scoreboard kind of put the dagger in them."
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On Mizzou's first-ever series win over LSU…
"This was a big one. It's definitely a statement win for our program. We're here to stay and we're here to compete. That's exactly what the message I want our players to understand. Every series we go into we talk about it a lot. We talk about series wins. It doesn't matter if you go down 0-1 in the series like we did this weekend. You have to continue to battle. If you do enough right things then you can win a series."
On Joven's quality start on the bump…
"We knew that Art was there the whole time. It's such a luxury to have four quality left-handers like we do that are all starters. We expected Art to come in and throw really well today. I thought he was effectively wild early and once he settled in and gave us what we needed."
