Texas found itself in the Big XII driver's seat after sweepink Oklahoma two weeks ago, and yielded that status with a frustratiing 0-2-1 home series against Kansas State last weekend. The roller coaster continued this week, with a three-game sweep of the Baylor Bears in Austin and Waco that put the Longhorns right back in the front of the conference.
A quick look at the standings shows what an ineteresting weekend it will be. Kansas State sits in second place by a single game with lowly Texas Tech and not so lowly Kansas on their slate. Meanwhile, Texas A&M is percentage points behind the Wildcats, also about two games behind the Longhorns. The Texas season ends this weekend with the Aggie series, whereas the rest of the conference except Missouri has one more conference series May 15-17. So if Texas can win at least two of three from the Aggies, then they ought to be in good shape to hold off Kansas State--or, at worst, to finish second in the league.
Texas Sports has your full recaps of all three Baylor games: Friday's 12-4 win, Saturday's 19-11 slugfest, and Sunday's 3-1 pitcher's duel. A few quick notes after the jump.
- Congratulations to Coach Augie Garrido, as Saturday marked his remarkable 1,700th career win combined at Cal State Fullerton and at UT.
- The story on both Friday and Saturday, at least to a degree, was that the Baylor defense had the complete and total come-aparts. The Bears committed seven errors on Friday and three important miscues on Saturday. At the same time, give the Texas hitters credit for taking advantage of the extra opportunities afforded them.
- The total runs scored in the series of 34 is very exciting, especially against a decent Baylor pitching staff. It indicates that optimism may be somewhat warranted, and that the hit totals against K-State were a more important predictor of future performance than the run totals.
- Who's excited about Taylor Jungmann? We are.
- This team has the horses on the mound to make a run to Omaha. We've been saying it all year, and we stand by it now. Ruffin, Green, Workman, and Jungmann would all be in the weekend rotation for just about any team in the country.