AUBURN | In his first three seasons at Auburn, Peyton Glavine totaled 11.0 innings pitched and an 11.45 ERA.

In his last seven outings this season, he’s totaled 15 innings, a 2.40 ERA and become a key weekend contributor.

“I couldn’t be more proud of Peyton Glavine and his perseverance,” said Auburn coach Butch Thompson. “He’s put years into this window and this moment. Every time he’s gotten the ball and had success, it’s been fun to watch because of all he’s been through.”

As Glavine describes it, he came to Auburn in 2017-18 as a skinny 18-year old with a fastball that would top out at 82-84 mph.

“Coach Thompson was definitely taking a chance on me. I wasn’t quite ready for this level of competition,” Glavine said. “It was definitely a lot of hard work, a lot of ups and downs, a lot of help from Coach Thompson and Coach Hudson and Coach Smith when he was here. They helped me figure out who I was a pitcher.

“They kept giving me a chance to get out there and luckily through all that work, it’s brought me to where I am this year. It’s given me a chance to go out there and have some success for our team and help us win some games.”

Glavine’s best pitch is his changeup, and adding a little more pop to his fastball, it’s up to 87-88, has helped make his featured pitch even better.

“At the end of the day, I want to pitch away. I want to use my changeup away,” said Glavine. “In order to do that effectively, I have to be able to pitch inside with my fastball to get guys off the inner half of the plate.

“I’m just beyond grateful being able to be where I am right now and finally having sustained success. Being able to see it all pay off this year, being able to give my team a chance to win, has been extremely gratifying. It’s been awesome.”

Glavine will be counted on for at least one outing against LSU this weekend. He’s best when he goes through the lineup once as he did at Georgia last weekend, throwing 3.0 perfect innings of relief with five strikeouts. The previous weekend, Glavine started against Florida, threw three scoreless innings before allowing three runs on three hits in the fourth.

Thompson and pitching coach Tim Hudson took a more proactive approach with the pitching staff last weekend and it resulted in AU’s first SEC series win. He plans to do the same this weekend, which means using more pitchers for shorter outings.

“We will absolutely try to attack the same way we did last week,” Thompson said.

Auburn, 19-21 overall and 5-16 in the SEC, goes into the weekend series tied with Texas A&M and Missouri for 12th in the conference and two games behind 11th-place LSU. AU plays all three teams to finish up the regular season starting with LSU Thursday night.

“No wiggle room for us,” said Thompson. “It’s really important for us to play good baseball. Kind of a postseason feel for us at this point.”

Thursday's game is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. CT on ESPNU, Friday’s 7 p.m. on SEC Network and Saturday’s 2 p.m. on SECN+/ESPN+.