The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Baseball earns Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship title game spot
05.23.2009 | Baseball
May 23, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY -- For the second straight day, the No. 5 Texas Longhorns exorcised their Sunflower State demons and posted a 4-2 win over the No. 17 Kansas State Wildcats on Saturday afternoon at AT&T Bricktown Ballpark to advance to the title game of the 2009 Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship.
Texas, who went 0-5-1 against Kansas and Kansas State during the regular-season, posted a 9-3 win against the Jayhawks on Friday and followed it up with the victory over the Wildcats on Saturday to finish round robin play with a 2-1 mark. The Horns finished tied in the standings with Baylor and Kansas State, but earned the title bid since they had the highest seeding among the three teams.
Freshman Taylor Jungmann (7-3) pitched a gem for the Longhorns to earn the win. He yielded two runs, one earned, on five hits and two walks while striking out four over 7.2 innings. Austin Wood allowed just one hit while striking out one over 1.1 shutout innings to earn his 14th save of the season.
Texas (40-13-1) drew first blood in the home half of the fourth inning. Brandon Belt roped a leadoff double to the gap in right centerfield, moved to third on a sacrifice bunt by Russell Moldenhauer and scored on a sacrifice fly by Preston Clark to take the 1-0 lead. Clark had replaced Cameron Rupp behind the plate in the third inning when Rupp was injured hitting his hand on a bat while attempting to throw out a base stealer.
Kansas State (41-16-1) grabbed the lead with a pair of runs in the top of the fifth. With one out, Dane Yelovich was hit by a pitch and Adam Muenster singled to leftfield to put runners at the corners. Muenster stole second base to put a pair in scoring position and Carter Jurica drove in the equalizer with a groundout to shortstop. The Wildcats took a 2-1 lead when Texas shortstop Brandon Loy misplayed a grounder by Nick Martini.
The Longhorns tied the game at 2-2 in the bottom half of the fifth. Kevin Keyes hit a wall-banger to centerfield for a leadoff double, moved to third on a sacrifice bunt by David Hernandez and scored on a single through the left side of the infield by Connor Rowe.
Texas reclaimed the lead in the sixth inning. Belt drew a walk, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Moldenhauer, advanced to third on a hard grounder by Clark and scored on a single up the middle by Loy to give the Longhorns a 3-2 advantage.
The Longhorns added an insurance run in the eighth inning. With one out, Travis Tucker doubled down the leftfield line and Belt drew an intentional walk to put two runners on base. After Kevin Lusson struck out looking, Clark was issued a walk to fill the range with Horns and Loy knocked Tucker with an infield single.
Loy, who had a rough day on defense with three errors, made up for it with a fine offensive day, going 2-for-3 with two RBI. Belt went 1-for-2 with a double and two runs.
Texas will play either Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas A&M or Texas Tech in Sunday's championship game at 1 p.m. The game will be televised on Fox Sports Net.