TCU baseball advances to Big 12 championship game, pulls away from K-State in semis
TCU baseball needed a couple tries, but it punched its ticket to the Big 12 championship game on Saturday in Oklahoma City.
After falling to Kansas State 5-2 in a morning matchup, TCU avenged that loss with a 17-7 run-rule victory over K-State in eight innings in an afternoon matchup to reach the championship.
TCU will face Oklahoma State for the tournament title at 5 p.m. Sunday at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark. Oklahoma State reached the game by beating Texas 5-4 on Saturday. TCU swept Oklahoma State in the regular-season series April 16-18 in Fort Worth.
TCU coach Jim Schlossnagle didn’t know who would start Sunday, but mentioned Luke Savage and Johnny Ray as the top candidates.
TCU has won the Big 12 tournament twice — in 2014 and 2016 — since joining the league. The Frogs won a share of the league’s regular-season title this year and is looking to win both championships in the same season for the first time in program history. Along with this season, TCU won regular-season titles in 2015 and 2017.
“If there’s a championship to win, we want to win it,” Schlossnagle said. “We’ve already won one this year — I know some people are saying we didn’t deserve it — but I am not going to apologize for it. Tomorrow, we have a chance to win another one.”
Added senior catcher Zach Humphreys: “To be tournament and regular-season champions would be awesome.”
The Frogs got to the championship game by winning the afternoon affair with the Wildcats.
K-State took an early 1-0 lead in the first, but TCU responded in a big way in the bottom half. The Frogs scored seven runs, sending 11 batters to the plate. Hunter Wolfe and Luke Boyers both had two RBIs in the inning.
The Frogs scored single runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth to build a 10-3 lead. But the Wildcats made it interesting with four runs in the seventh to pull within 10-7.
TCU, though, ended it with seven runs in the eighth. That inning was highlighted by two-run singles by Wolfe and Gray Rodgers. The game ended on a throwing error by K-State that allowed TCU to score the game-clinching run.
The morning game didn’t go as well for the Frogs.
Charles King started the first game Saturday, allowing five runs (one earned) on seven hits with two walks and three strikeouts over 3 2/3 innings.
K-State scored four of those runs in the first inning, although TCU cut the deficit in half with two runs of its own in the bottom half. But the Frogs didn’t score the rest of the game.
At the end of the day, TCU needed to only win one of the two games in the tournament’s double-elimination format. Now it has a chance to win a postseason Big 12 championship to go along with its regular-season crown.
This story was originally published May 29, 2021 at 12:21 PM.
