On Saturday, Coastal Carolina and LSU will face off in Game 1 of the College World Series Championship Final. And if LSU needed any more motivation ahead of the start of the series, Chanticleers’ players certainly gave it to them in a press conference ahead of the start of the series on Friday.
Of the two teams, Coastal Carolina comes in as the team with more to prove, coming out of the Sun Belt conference against the powerhouse LSU team out of the SEC. But as far as Chanticleers’ players see things, they have certainly proven that they belong after rattling off 26 consecutive wins. Their last loss came in an April 22 game against the College of Charleston Cougars.
On Friday, Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall was accompanied by three of his players, Blake Barthol, Caden Bodine, and Jacob Morrison, in a press conference previewing their upcoming series against LSU. And right away, it was clear that all three players had a bit of a chip on their shoulders about the series.
When asked by a reporter to name something admirable about LSU, all three players took a long pause before breaking out into laughter, later explaining how there is nothing that they admire with their opponents.
“Not a whole lot,” answered Morrison.
“Yeah, I mean, we’re not really worried about the Tigers,” said Barthol. “We’re more of a self-oriented team. We’re focused on our team and our team only.”
Reporter: What do you admire about LSU?
Coastal Carolina: 😂 pic.twitter.com/wPF0nUzZsD
— ESPN (@espn) June 20, 2025
On one hand, the question from the reporter was a bit of a weird one. After all, LSU is going to be trying their very best to ruin the spectacular season Coastal Carolina has put together to this point. So it’s not like Chanticleers’ players are required to be best friends with their opponents.
Still, we have seen this kind of question handled far better in the past in other sports. It would have been easy for the Coastal Carolina players to offer a simple message about how well LSU had played up until this point.
Regardless of how you feel about the answer from the Coastal Carolina players, it was unapologetically authentic. Though, LSU players likely will use this as fuel ahead of Saturday’s game, which they are currently favored in at sportsbooks.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.