I took this picture after the Pilot's final home game of the 2025 season, the game that sent them to the world series. Last weekend, LSU-Shreveport baseball played their first game at Pilot Field since this picture was taken.
Last weekend, LSU-Shreveport saw a team play as defending national champions for the first time ever. On January 22, The Pilots baseball team opened the season against the Tabor College Blue Jays out of Hillsboro, Kansas. Tabor gave the 2025 Pilots their best fight of the season but could not find that KO punch at the end. They started off the 2026 campaign with two more shots to end the historic win streak.
The first game was a see-saw affair. The game saw four lead changes and four game-tying knocks. It was an interesting story for the two starting pitchers. Tabor’s Wyatt Bauer and LSUS’ Brock Lucas weren’t exactly dominating, but they both exchanged unearned zeros through the first three innings. Lucas did give one run up in the third inning, but it came on a throwing error. LSUS did not wait long to answer, as in the fourth inning Bronson Neave tied the game with a homer, the Pilots first hit of the season. After this, the bats came alive for both teams, but LSUS would have liked to have more than they did, seeing they loaded the bases twice but only got a single run out of it all.
The turning point came in the bottom of the seventh inning, as with one out the powerful Nazir Mendez hit a ball far over the right field fence, a ball that the right fielder could only stand and watch, for a solo homer that swung the momentum in the Pilots direction. Calvin Shepherd entered in the eighth inning and recorded the final six outs of the game, moving the Pilots to 1-0 on the new season.
For game 2, the final box score might make it seem as if LSUS blew Tabor out, but that was not the case. They did strike first with a Carlos Vega homer and did shutdown the Tabor offense, but it was not easy. Evan Gant, the LSUS starter, was unable to go for more than three innings. The story of this matchup was Camden Stephens.
Stephens was not a huge part of the team on the field last season. He appeared in just nine games and pitched in just over seven innings. In this small sample size, he posted a 2.45 ERA with two earned runs on seven hits, two walks, and five strikeouts. Not bad, but nothing special. On the night of January 22, Stephens went nearly five innings pitched, giving up just one hit. He walked three and struck out three. Zero earned runs. After one appearance in 2026, Stephens already has half the innings he posted a season ago with a 0.00 ERA to go along with it.
Most of the game saw LSUS up 2-0. They were able to small ball their way to a 6-0 lead towards the end. Robert Lastra and Hunter Nichols came in after Stephens to shut things down and improve the Pilots to 2-0. You can view the full box scores and recap at lsusathletics.com.
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