Kansas Baseball Clinches Big 12 Title For First Time Since 1949

For the first time since 1949, the Kansas Jayhawks are champions of the Big 12 baseball regular season. The Jayhawks had clinched a share on Thursday night with a win over BYU, and then their 7-6 victory on Friday evening sealed the outright title, as the Jayhawks held off a late run by the Cougars at Miller Park in Provo, Utah.

“It feels pretty good. I’m so proud of these guys,” head coach Dan Fitzgerald said. “This is four years in the making. It’s our families, it’s all of our wives. It’s the entire Jayhawk nation, it’s our administration and it’s hundreds of people who have led to this moment. It’s pretty special.”

On Friday night, the Jayhawks jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the first few innings. Kansas jumped out to the lead in the second inning on a two-out RBI double by Jordan Bach. That lead increased to 3-0 in the fourth inning when Bach drove in another run on a RBI single. Augusto Mungarrieta followed with an RBI double into the gap to extend the lead. Fast forward to the sixth inning and the offense continued to roll. Mungarrieta hit a two-run homer and then Tyson LeBlanc went yard for back-to-back homers to give KU a 6-0 lead in the sixth.

However three runs in both the seventh and eighth innings by BYU tied the game at 6-6. The tie did not last for long as Tyson Owens hit a go-ahead solo home run in the top of the ninth to put Kansas ahead 7-6.

Kansas and BYU will play the series finale and the final game of the regular season on Saturday. First pitch from Miller Park is scheduled for 2 p.m. CT and the game will be broadcast on ESPN+.

The win put KU baseball at 22-7 in league play, which along with with West Virginia’s 4-0 loss to TCU locked up the Big 12 title. The win also means that the Jayhawks will have the No. 1 seed at the Big 12 tournament in Surprise, Arizona, which begins on Thursday. While KU has not won a Big 12 regular season title in 76 years, they last won the Big 12 tournament in 2006.