BATON ROUGE, La. – For eight innings Friday night, Cal gave the LSU home crowd precious little to cheer about in the first ever baseball game between these two schools.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Tigers broke through and walked off with a 4-3 win on Josh Smith's bases-loaded two-out single that scored two and erased a one-run Bears lead.

For 10^th-ranked LSU, it was the big hit the team had been missing most of the night. For the Bears, it was a tough ending to swallow in a game they controlled most of the way before a crowd of 10,468 at Alex Box Stadium.

Freshman reliever Sam Stoutenborough wound up with the loss, but it wasn't indicative of how well Cal (6-5) pitched the entire night. The Bears had limited the Tigers (10-3) to just five hits and a pair of sacrifice flies entering the ninth.

And even in that final LSU rally, Stoutenborough appeared to make the pitch he needed. With two outs and runners on first and second, he snapped off a good breaking ball that No. 9 hitter Hal Hughes swung at and missed. But the ball squirted to the backstop for a wild pitch, allowing the inning to continue as Hughes reached first and both  runners advanced to load the bases.

Smith's soft liner found grass in shallow center and the tying and winning runs crossed the plate.

As tough as it was for the Bears to absorb such a loss in the opener of this three-game series, they showed that they match up well with a team that's traditionally one of the best in the powerhouse Southeastern Conference.

Cameron Eden got things started on a high note for Cal, leading off the game with a home run to left-center and sending an early charge through the visiting dugout.

LSU tied it in the third when Brock Mathis tripled and scored on Giovanny DiGiacomo's sacrifice fly. But Bears starter Arman Sabouri was excellent, holding the Tigers to just one hit and a run over five innings.

Stoutenborough took the ball and largely pitched well over the final 3 2/3 innings, including retiring LSU's 3-4 hitters to strand the tying run in scoring position in the eighth. He gave up two singles in the ninth leading up to the strikeout/wild pitch, but one of those was an infield dribbler.

Eden, making his third start in a row as the leadoff hitter, continues to be a bright spot. He barreled up a 1-1 pitch from Zach Hess and drove a homer over the wall in left-center on the third pitch of the game.

It was the second homer of the season for Eden, who finished 2-for-2 with two walks. He's now 6-for-10 in three games batting atop the order.