Rouse: Big 12 Baseball surprises
Charles Rouse III, Sports Editor
SURPRISES ABOUND IN BIG 12 CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT, by Charles (Chip) Rouse
OKLAHOMA CITY – We all know that anything can happen once you get into the Big 12 Conference Baseball Championship. And this year that “anything” did indeed happen, just not for our three area schools that qualified to participate in the championship. Unfortunately, none of our area Big 12 schools will make it to the championship game of the Big 12 postseason baseball tournament, but then neither will the top two favorites coming into the tournament. The eighth-seeded Missouri Tigers did pull off one of the tournament surprises, upsetting regular-season champion and top-ranked Texas 7-3 in the second game of the tournament on Wednesday in Oklahoma City.
The Tigers were not as fortunate the next day, dropping a 7-2 contest to Texas A&M, effectively eliminating any chance of Missouri playing for the conference championship. With not a lot to play for and facing its final game of the year, MU made sure it closed out the season on a winning note, downing the fifth-seeded Texas Tech Red Raiders in the first game today and making it two out of three over Texas schools by the same 7-3 score. The Tigers pushed across two runs in the bottom half of the second inning without the benefit of a hit to take the early lead over the Red Raiders and added four more in the seventh to seal the victory.
Missouri Tigers pulled huge upset over Texas
It was a nice ending to disappointing season for the Tigers, who finished the year at 29-26 overall and 10-16 in the conference. A year ago, Missouri lost in the championship game to Texas. “It’s difficult to come out and play hard and stay motivated,” said MU coach Tim Jamieson after Saturday’s game. “One area we did not fall short in is how hard we played.” Tiger leftfielder Ryan Gebhart contributed a home run, his first of the year, in the win over Texas Tech, which won two out of three from MU during the regular season. “Coach Jamieson got us together (prior to the game) and asked us what we were going to play for. ‘Play for the name on your jersey, Missouri, and play for the two seniors (Aaron Senne and Michael Libertro) on our team,’ he urged us.”
Kansas State came into the championship seeded third, the highest of any of the Kansas City area Big 12 schools. The Wildcats chances went by the wayside on the opening day, however, in losing 11-8 to the Baylor Bears, one of the two teams that will be playing for the conference championship on Sunday at the AT&T Brickyard Ballpark in Oklahoma City. Kansas State bounced back on Friday, though, and defeated its Sunflower state archrival Kansas by a count of 10-5 to record the Wildcats third win in four games against the Jayhawks this season. In the win over seventh-seeded Kansas, Kansas State beat KU starter Cameron Selik, who pitched eight strong innings against the Wildcats two weeks ago in Manhattan to record his sixth win of the season and the Jayhawks lone win this year over their in-state rivals.
Kansas State Wildcats struggled in the tournament
K-State would have nothing of it this time around, plating three runs in three separate innings and knocking the KU starter Selik out of the game after 5 2/3 innings, during which he gave up 10 hits and seven runs.
Three of the Wildcat runs against Kansas came in the ninth inning, which has turned out to be a nightmare inning for the Jayhawks recently. In Kansas’ last five games (four games against Oklahoma and Friday’s game with Kansas State), the Jayhawks have been outscored 24-0 in the final frame, all losses. KU’s five-game losing streak is the team’s longest since 2005. Kansas won the conference championship in 2006.
The Wildcats had a good chance to redeem themselves from their opening-game loss by defeating Oklahoma in the late afternoon game today, but that was not to be. K-State, the best-hitting team in the conference during the regular season, couldn’t mount any kind of offensive attack against the Sooners as OU rolled to a 15-2 victory. OU starter Bobby Shore shutdown the K-State lineup for 5 innings before turning it over to the Sooners bullpen. The Wildcats were held to five hits in the game, while Oklahoma pounded out 15 runs on 15 hits. Kansas lost its opening game in the tournament, falling for the fourth consecutive game to the Oklahoma Sooners, 3-2.
The Sooners, seeded No. 2 in the championship, swept three games from KU last weekend in the regular-season finale. Oklahoma rallied in the final inning to beat the Jayhawks in the series final last weekend, and then pulled off the same trick in Wednesday’s game to snag victory from the jaws of defeat and hand Kansas its fourth consecutive loss. “I think we probably eliminated ourselves (form an NCAA Tournament bid) Wednesday night,” said Kansas coach Rich Price. “I thought coming into the thing (the Big !2 Baseball Championship), after we lost the two games in the ninth inning earlier against Oklahoma, that we had to win two out of three to get in.”
Kansas was playing Baylor in the late game on Saturday (at the time of this writing) to conclude the four days of pool play that determined the two teams to meet in the conference championship game on Sunday. Oklahoma’s win over Kansas, coupled with the Texas loss to Missouri earlier that same day, put the Sooners in the driver’s seat to capture their second Big 12 Championship crown. It turns out it was a short ride in the driver’s seat for Sonny Galloway’s Sooners, as the Baylor Bears upended OU Friday night, earning a spot in the championship game against the Pool1 winner, which turns out to be Texas A&M.
The Aggies defeated Texas Tech, Missouri and Texas on Saturday to play their way into a championship date Sunday opposite Baylor. After 12 games in four days, two teams are left standing: No. 4 seed Texas A&M and No. 6 seed Baylor. Anyone who would have predicted that matchup on Sunday frankly would have been thought to be short a few brain cells. What’s even more shocking is to see the country’s No. 1 team lose three consecutive games after posting a 24-3 record against Big 12 teams.
It’s hard to say what the implosion in Oklahoma City will do to the Longhorns’ seeding in the upcoming NCAA Tournament, but it is certain to have a backsliding impact that could imperil the Big 12 regular-season champion’s tournament pairings. In the memorable words of word-choice extraordinaire Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” There are a few Big 12 schools this weekend that wish that wasn’t true.
RESULTS OF BIG 12 BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP POOL PLAY
Pool 1
Texas A&M Aggies 3-0
Missouri Tigers 2-1
Texas Tech Red Raiders 1-2
Texas Longhorns 0-3
Pool 2
Baylor Bears 2-0*
Oklahoma Sooners 2-1
Kansas State Wildcats 1-2
Kansas Jayhawks 0-2*
*Late game not included
Charles (Chip) F. Rouse III, the Kansas City Sports Examiner, has spent over 40 years working in and with the news media. Rouse, a journalist by training and a graduate of the University of Kansas, has served in the role of newspaper reporter; in addition to radio and television. To view Chip’s sports articles, including this one, on Examiner.com, please click here. He welcomes your comments at crouse@massappealnews.com.
May 30th, 2010 at 9:24 am
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