SURPRISE, Ariz.— The Kansas Jayhawks won the Big 12 Conference regular season title, but the real prize is theirs for the taking at Saturday’s championship game at Surprise Stadium.
They blew out the Oklahoma State Cowboys 9-2 on a hot and steamy afternoon turned evening, backed by more than solid pitching performances from starter Mason Cook and bulk relievers Tony Scheidt and Riane Ritter.
“Our scouting part was good and just working the zone, I thought working the zone was great today,” said Kansas head coach Dan Fitzgerald after the victory. “It was just like that when we played them earlier in the season, if you get ahead it’s going to work out well.”
Jayhawks catcher Augusto Mungarrietta provided healthy cuts at the plate all day, starting with an RBI single in the bottom of the first inning and a perfectly placed double to the left-center field gap in the eighth to add an insurance run (at least it was at the time) to make it 4-2.
Oklahoma State’s starter, left-hander Ethan Lund, walked two and hit a batter in the first. He got lucky in the second, watching Tyson LeBlanc’s long fly ball to center field smack off a Hampton Inn and Suites advertisement. A run still scored on the play, but three is fewer than four. It was a credit to Lund, who bounced back to throw four consecutive scoreless frames from the third through the sixth to keep his team in the game. The Cowboys were on the board for the first time in the sixth on Avery Ortiz’s run-scoring double that fell short of a two-run homer.
That pulled Kansas starter Mason Cook, who similar to Thursday’s hurler Dominic Voegele, was cool, calm, and collected on the hill. Cook’s final line featured seven punch outs, three walks, and one earned run on three hits in 6 ⅓ innings.