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Monday - May 30, 2011

Big 12 Tournament, Day 5

Missouri at Texas A&M

The Championship game proved to be a bit of a nail-biter. Which came as a surprise after the first couple of innings. Missouri jumped to a 6-0 lead, scoring 2 in the 1st and 4 in the 2nd. Missouri's season was on the line. A win would mean they'd make the Field of 64 and have a shot at the World Series. A loss would mean their season was over. They played like it. But, they gave up 5 runs in the bottom of the 3rd and 2 more in the 4th to fall behind by 1 run. But...ta da!...they scored a run the the 6th to tie things back up at 7-7. The Aggies scratched another run across in the 7th, though, to go up 8-7 and things just didn't look good for the Tigers. But they came back in the 9th, scoring 2 in the top of the frame to take a 9-8 lead. Could they hold on? Nope. They gave up a game-tying run in the bottom of the inning. Free baseball! Missouri got a runner to 2b with 2 outs in the 10th but he was stranded there. In the bottom of the inning, the first A&M batter hit a monster shot to deep cf but, the center fielder ran back to the wall, adjusted to the ball as it was blown around by the wind, and made a last-second lunge to catch the ball. Whew. Nice play. The next batter grounded out to 1b. You could tell this was going to go another inning. Up to the plate came Andrew Collazo, the #9 batter. He'd made a throwing error in the 9th that helped Missouri score those 2 runs that gave them that temporary lead. Last year, tied 3-3 in the bottom of the 10, the Aggie shortstop (Brodie Green) hit a 2-run homer in the Championship game to beat Baylor. This year? Yep. Andrew Collazo hit a homerun over the left field wall to win the game for the Aggies in the 10th inning. Texas A&M won the game 10-9.

The Horns got 3 players onto the all-tournament team:

What's next?

Now, we wait to hear about Regional pairings and seedings. It was announced yesterday that 4 Southwest Conference teams would host: Texas, Texas A&M, Rice, and TCU. Those are also the 4 Texas schools that were selected. Heh. I've seen 2 projections that list Texas as a National Seed and 2 that don't. I do not have a good feel at all for whether or not the Horns will be a National Seed. I'm thinking they might've been edged out by not making the Championship Game of the tournament. I hope I'm wrong about that. But, there's no way to know ahead of time.

Posted by Joanna at 9:06 AM