The562’s coverage of Lakewood Athletics is sponsored by J.P. Crawford, Class of 2013.
Anthony Eyanson represented Long Beach well on the national stage. The Lakewood alum took his baseball talent to LSU for 2024-25 and was a major part of this year’s NCAA Division I Championship team.
“[LSU] is the place to be,” Eyanson said via ESPN.
Eyanson got the start in the Championship game against No. 13 Coastal Carolina. The former Lancer threw 99 pitches over 6.1 innings with nine strikeouts for the No. 6 Tigers.
Eyanson kept most of the Chanticleers off balance with breaking balls below the zone. He also stranded at least one Chanticleer in five of his six full innings of work.
“There is nobody better in baseball … in baseball at pitching with runners on base than Anthony Eyanson,” LSU head coach Jay Johnson said.
LSU rolled a 4-6-3 double play to clinch its second title in the past three seasons, and eighth national championship overall — second-most among Division I programs.
Eyanson’s stellar performance came just one day after fellow LSU starter Kade Anderson delivered a 130-pitch complete-game shutout in the first game of the championship series.
Anderson and Eyanson’s dominance against the Chanticleers was a microcosm of the Tigers’ campaign. The dual-ace tandem started a combined 37 games this season, with the Tigers winning 31 of those.
“The two guys that toed the rubber for us in this series are major leaguers,” Johnson said via ESPN.
This win — Eyanson’s 12th of the year — came in what became the final game of his collegiate career. The first three rounds of this year’s MLB draft took place July 13th in Atlanta. Eyanson was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the third round as the 87th overall pick.
“coming to lsu changed my life. so blessed to have experienced this with my own 2 eyes
#562,” Eyanson wrote in a June 24 Instagram post.
