Four weeks ago, Ben McDonald answered a simple question with a simple answer.

The former LSU great and current ESPN announcer knows this Tigers team as well as anyone, so he was well equipped to tackle the “what does LSU need to do in order to win it all” question.

“Honestly speaking,” McDonald said, “the only way LSU is gonna win a national championship will be because the pitching took a step forward. That’s what has to happen.”

Well, on Tuesday night, that happened. Just like it had to.

No, it wasn’t Paul Skenes delivering a gem for the ages. It was … Nate Ackenhausen?

That’s right. Ackenhausen, AKA the guy who hadn’t ever started a game at LSU and had never reached 4 innings in an outing, was brilliant. The southpaw delivered 6 shutout innings for LSU in an elimination game to reach the CWS semifinals … just as everyone expected.

With the season on the line, Ackenhausen and LSU dug deep.

Sure, the Tigers still got a late bomb from Dylan Crews, and the final score might’ve suggested otherwise. But don’t get it twisted. LSU won in the grittiest, timeliest of fashion to stay alive and earn a rematch against a Wake Forest squad who pretended like it won a national title on Monday night (more on that in a second).

Tuesday night, however, was about LSU bouncing back and finding a way by any means necessary. Wind gusts of 25 MPH kept those hot LSU bats at bay for most of the evening. Crews probably should’ve had 2 home runs on the night, but a ball with 112.3 MPH exit velocity only had warning track power. Tommy White had another ball that looked like a home run off the bat that was knocked down by the Omaha wind.

No worries. LSU found ways.

The team who entered the night 4-11 in games in which it scored 5 runs or less did the little things.

Catcher Alex Milazzo buried a ball in the dirt to prevent Tennessee from getting its first run on the board to preserve the 2-0 lead late.

LSU got that lead via a bunt down the third base line, which forced an errant Tennessee throw to plate an insurance run.

And when Ackenhausen needed some help from the pen, who else but Riley Cooper made timely pitches to get out of a bases loaded jam in the 7th.

If you’re going to be the last team standing in Omaha, you need plenty of those moments. Preferably, it wouldn’t take reaching an elimination game to get those moments, but surely Jay Johnson will take them better late than never.

Now the question for LSU is twofold.

The first is whether Skenes will return on early rest — he last pitched in LSU’s victory against Tennessee on Saturday — and start in Wednesday’s elimination game. LSU needs to beat Wake Forest twice in order to advance to the CWS finals, but if the Tigers could somehow scrap together another non-Skenes quality start with him fresh heading into a potential grudge match on Thursday, look out.

That’s, of course, a big “if.” Tuesday wasn’t the long-ball mashing LSU that we’ve come to know over the course of this season. It remains to be seen if it can win another elimination game by manufacturing runs and getting some elite non-Skenes starting pitching.

Alternatively, maybe LSU’s bats are about to get going after they were atypically quiet for the majority of Tuesday night. They only averaged 4.3 runs in Omaha so far. That includes a 2-run, 13-strikeout showing in Monday night’s loss to Wake Forest. That felt like a game LSU squandered. Lord knows Wake Forest celebrated like it stole the game and won a title … and not just because it had a borderline dogpile for clinching a semifinals trip (NSFW).

Say what you want about that.

What’s not up for debate is that LSU earned a prime opportunity to get some redemption. It’ll try and continue the trend of knocking off the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, which dates all the way back to when Miami (FL) won it all in 1999.

LSU, on the other hand, is trying to become the first team since 1965 to have the No. 1 overall pick (that’s expected to be Crews) and win a national title in the same year. There’s a lot more work that needs to be done in order to make that happen. Like, beating the nation’s top team in consecutive days with 1 of them coming without Skenes. Easier said than done.

But Tuesday showed that maybe LSU is a bit more multi-dimensional than what we thought. Johnson said entering Tuesday that he believed his team was playing its best baseball all year. Tuesday might not have been LSU’s best, but it needed something more important than that.

Survival mode, engaged.