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Saturday - May 29, 2010

Big 12 Tournament, Day 4

Another full day of games. Alas, none of them had any impact on tomorrow's Championship Game. Texas A&M (#4 seed) and Baylor (#6 seed) had already guaranteed themselves a spot in the Sunday game before the first pitch of any of today's games. First time that's happened since the Big 12 switched to the 2-pool round-robin format.

Missouri played home to Texas Tech in the first game of the day. Last game of the year for the Tigers. With a losing record in regular season Big 12 play and a 28-28 overall record going into today's game, it's very likely the last game of the year for the Red Raiders as well. Tech had a shaky 2nd inning and gave up 2 runs without yielding a hit. Ahead 2-1, the Tigers left the bases juiced in the 4th. Tech went on to tie the game 3-3 in the 6th. And, the Tigers put a 4-spot up in the 7th...2 quick outs followed by a walk, an error, another walk, and a 3-run homer. The Red Raiders got a couple on in the 9th but could not push any runs across. Mizzou won the game 7-3. I was surprised in the post-game news conference to see Tech talking about practicing on Monday and waiting on the selection show. Do they really think they'll get in with a losing record? Or is it just wishful thinking? I don't see it. But, they stated their case. Maybe it'll make a difference. I do think they're better than a lot of the teams that'll get automatic bids but that's the way things happen some times. To my mind, their record just doesn't support a bid.

Texas played home to Texas A&M in the 2nd game of the day and lost 3-9. Sigh. The Aggies hit Cole Green and Brandon Workman really hard today. Ouch. Offensively, the Horns did not look as flat as they did on Thursday. But, like Thursday, they hit into several rally-killing double plays. The worst being a 5-2-3 double play in the 6th with bases loaded and no outs. Oh, the agony. Chance Ruffin looked nice and sharp when he went in and we got a nice 1-2-3 inning out of Josh Urban who made a surprise appearance on the mound in the 9th.

Kansas State played home to Oklahoma in the 3rd game of the day. With the game tied 2-2 in the 3rd, they (the Big 12) inserted a long interview with...I don't know who. Because I muted the sound. I hate when they talk over the action. So, I protest by refusing to listen. It was much worse than normal, though. They went to a split-screen view where they shrunk the playing view down to about 3 inches by 2 inches and just talked over the action...completely ignoring the game. 'Near as I can tell, not much happened but...REALLY??? They had to show the two guys talking? They couldn't just talk and let us at least SEE the action at a reasonable size? Amazing. I was so horrified, I had to take a screen shot for you. I measured it...239 x 143 pixels for the game image. That's tiny. Sigh... K-State kind of fell apart in the 4th as they gave up 6 runs...on 6 hits (included a couple of infield singles) and a throwing error that ended up being nullified by a homerun. With OU in the lead 9-2 in the 5th, they did it again!...split the screen and chatted with someone from OU for about 10 (!) minutes. Appalling. There is absolutely no reason in the world to show the talking heads in this situation. None. Anyway, back to the game. The Sooners pushed across 4 more in the top of the 8th to go up 13-2 and held on to run-rule the Wildcats in 8 innings.

And, Kansas played home team to Baylor in the nightcap. Baylor, mysteriously, sported ugly black jerseys. Nike in the house? Surprisingly, the game started on time. Well, with the earlier run-rule, I guess it's not that surprising. Baylor was marching along with the game well in hand (they'd scored 1 in the 1st, 2 in the 2nd, and 3 in the 6th) when the Jayhawks came to life with the aid of 4 hits and an error by the Baylor center fielder and scored 3 to end the shut-out. They threatened again in the 7th but the rally was squashed by a double play. Still behind 3-6, Kansas mounted a bit of a 2-out rally in the 9th...hitting back-to-back singles. But, it ended there when the next batter was called out on strikes. Baylor won 6-3.

Kind of interesting that the Aggies and the Bears won their games and are headed into tomorrow's game undefeated in the tournament. By the way, the Aggies won the toss and will be the home team.

Posted by Joanna at 10:30 PM