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Jared Jones (22) LSU Tigers vs UCLA Bruins in game eight of the 2025 NCAA Men’s College World Series at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska on Monday, June 16, 2025 (Photo by Eddie Kelly/ ProLook Photos)
Jay Johnson has a way of describing the best teams he’s coached.
He wants them trained like Navy SEALs, sharp and unshakable, but able to compete with the freedom of a casual ping pong player—loose, laughing, utterly unburdened. Somewhere between relentless and relaxed.
He sees that balance in Jared Jones, his 6-foot-4 power-hitting first baseman.
It was late spring in Baton Rouge, one of what felt like a hundred rain delays this season. LSU had already taken batting practice. The locker room could have been silent, focused. Instead, Johnson walked past and heard chaos. Laughter. A full-team game of something that defied typical pregame structure. Jones was at the front of it, as usual. Then they went out and scored eight runs in the first inning against Mississippi State.
“You’re sitting there thinking, are we ready to go?” Johnson said. “And then you see that and you realize, ‘Yeah, we are.’ He’s just brought this amazing sense of both being a good player and being in tune with the team. He knows what they need. He’s hard to find.”
Jones is the connective tissue on a roster built to win.
A veteran slugger with the personality of a best friend and the presence of a cornerstone. He’s hit 22 home runs in 66 games and driven in 76 runs while slashing .330/.423/.630 entering the national championship series. His 64 career home runs rank third in LSU history. He’s powered LSU through the postseason with two opposite-field blasts in Omaha and a walk-off single—a 100-plus mph laser off the glove of Arkansas second baseman Cam Kozeal—that sent the Tigers to the national title round.
But Jones means more than that. You hear it in every voice.
“He’s just one of those guys that’s a leader,” ace lefty Kade Anderson said. “He’s kind of built this team into what it is.”
Added freshman closer Casan Evans: “He brings everything a player could ask for. As a locker room guy, as a leader on the field, he’s had his struggles at times this year but he hasn’t shown them at all. From a freshman standpoint, that really allows me to know what kind of person he is and what kind of person I want to be for this team when it’s my turn to lead it.”
Jones had every reason not to be here. After blasting 28 home runs and hitting .301 as a sophomore, he entered the 2024 draft process with confidence. He attended the combine. He was ready to leave. But the right offer never came. And so, he returned.
Johnson flew to Georgia before the draft just to talk. He wasn’t sure what Jones would decide. But Jones’ father had mentioned a vision—coming back and leading LSU from the front this time, after playing a supporting role on the 2023 national title team.
“It was not a clear-cut thing,” Johnson said. “But I’ll go back to that conversation because it’s one thing to say it and then it takes the right person to actually make it real. He’s done that.”
Jones wasn’t in the starting lineup at the end of 2023’s postseason. He watched as his team beat Florida 18-4 to win the title.
Instead, he learned. From Cade Beloso. From Gavin Dugas. From Dylan Crews and Paul Skenes. LSU was built around stars that season, and Jones was talented enough to shine with them. But this year, he’s the one setting the tone.
“The guys would tell you he’s the unquestioned leader of this team,” Johnson said. “He’s become so much more than what he was when he got here. The growth as a person has been awesome.”
Freshman outfielder Derek Curiel saw it quickly.
“He’s not always super tense,” Curiel said. “He’s just always having a good time and making sure we have fun too.”
Second baseman Steven Milam said Jones is the one who slows the game down for the younger guys.
“Even if he’s 0-for-5, he’s in the cage, flipping the page,” Milam said. “He’s just always picking us up. He’s very vocal in the locker room, and if we need to make some tweaks, he’s not afraid to say it.”
Roommate and longtime friend Josh Pearson called him “one of the most mentally tough people I’ve met.”
“He’s a grinder, he works hard, and he’s super funny,” Pearson said. “You might think he’s going to be angry and he’ll look at you and crack a smile. He doesn’t put himself on a pedestal. He’ll tell you he’s been there, and he’s just trying to make you better.”
Jones’ sense of timing extends beyond the batter’s box. Teammates say he keeps things light—but only when appropriate.
“He keeps a fun environment around the team and doesn’t keep it too serious when it doesn’t need to be,” said Daniel Dickinson. “But when it does need to be serious, he keeps us all locked in.”
Chris Stanfield remembered being welcomed instantly by Jones after joining the Tigers over the offseason from Auburn. The junior outfielder said Jones was a one-man welcoming party, quick to make sure Stanfield knew—not just felt—that he was at home.
“He’s just really humble,” Stanfield said. “Funny, loose. But once it gets to game time, he’s locked in.”
That duality is what makes Jones unique. He’s not just the guy hitting 400-foot homers. He’s also the guy cracking jokes in the back of the bus, then working a count late in a tie game, then pouring his voice into the huddle when they need it.
Jones has always had the power. Johnson saw that from day one.
“When I first got to know him, I felt like I was looking at Mark McGwire,” he said.
But what’s made this season different is the discipline: contact on pitches in the zone, improved strike-zone management, clutch defense at first base. Johnson calls him one of the best defensive first basemen in the country.
“He made a lot of really tough plays not look like tough plays,” he said of Jones’ performance against Arkansas in the national semifinal round.
The physical tools were never in doubt. But now, he’s more than raw power. He’s character, polish, leadership—and yes, still thunder in the bat.
Johnson calls him the kind of player you find on every national title contender, but not just in the stat sheet. In the dugout. In the daily grind.
“You can’t get here without a Jared Jones,” he said.
For Johnson, the bond goes deeper than performance.
“Some things need to go right for you to do what we’ve done,” he said. “And that has to do with the people that end up in your organization. I knew we had a good player. But his commitment to being a great teammate, his ability to be coachable—he’s done the work.”
Jones will play for a national title this weekend. He’ll be drafted shortly after. But what he’s already built will last longer—a presence that centered a team, loosened it when it needed levity, locked it in when the moment demanded focus and walked them right to the edge of another dogpile.
Because when the storm rolled in, Jones was the one who made the room laugh then made the lineup click.
And that, more than anything, is what championship players do.
“I know it’s coming to an end here,” Johnson said. “But honestly, I can’t even picture our team and our program without him.”
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