March Madness comes to Big 12 Baseball

Big 12 Baseball in 2009 has been a tossed salad of winners and losers, upsets and surprises, and this weekend was no different:

■ Big 12 title race enters twilight zone, says Rivals.com:

The Big 12 title race would be a perfect place to start if anyone currently is looking to make a modern-day version of The Twilight Zone.

Texas A&M, Texas and Oklahoma State entered the season as heavy favorites to compete for the conference crown. But so far this weekend, all three teams are trying to stay out of the conference basement.

■ Unranked Kansas shocked everyone and swept #1 Texas in Lawrence this weekend. 5-4, 4-3, 4-3.

• From Rivals.com: JQKU: I was at the Friday and Saturday games and left recaps at Rock Chalk Talk. Texas simply does not look very good. Their infield defense has broken down several times, only Keyes looks good at the plate and Auggie seems afraid to use his bullpen. He left Chance Ruffin in Friday for 119 pitches and Ruffin did not look good. He was lucky to get out of the game without more damage done.

• From CollegeBaseballToday: UT made the Jayhawks look like the Braves pitching staff of the mid-90s, holding the Longhorns to 10 runs and just five multi-base hits.

• And a must-read related to this game is Nine innings of banter with John Sickels at the Kansas-Texas game: John Sickels is one of the best known baseball analysts in the country. He entered the profession as Bill James’ assistant in 1993. From 1995 to 2005 John worked at ESPN as their minor league baseball correspondent.

On scouting and evaluating college players: "I like to focus as much on performance as tools. I look for a player who combines these two characteristics ideally. A player with poor tools but who still performs well in college is not to be written off. He can still climb the ladder. A good example of this is David Eckstein. Conversely a player with good tools but who does not perform in college can still become a good professional player. So much of a player’s performance is based on environmental issues that are hard to understand or judge. In college a pitcher with good tools but with bad performance can still succeed at the next level. This is less true when it comes to position players. If a position player has good tools but can’t perform well at the college level, they probably cannot play at the professional level. Although it does happen at times. Look at Byron Wiley of Kansas State. He looked awful last year in college and is hitting very well in the Pioneer League.”

■ Unranked Mizzou took 2 of 3 from #3 Texas A&M

■ #9 Baylor won 2 of 3 over unranked Texas Tech

• From Big12Hardball.com: Baylor wins the series against Tech - no big deal, right? Except that the win by Tech is the first time since 1999 that the Bears haven't swept the Red Raiders. Kendall Volz went 5.2 innings Friday, allowing four runs, and a career-high 10 hits with three walks and six strikeouts.

■ #13 Oklahoma finished off a series win (KSU 91-1 Friday, OU 12-11 Saturday) against Kansas State with an incredible 29-4 thumping of the Wildcats on get-away day.

• From CollegeBaseballToday: Beyond the great 8-inning pitching performance of A.J. Morris on Friday, KSU gave up 44 hits and 15 home runs. Their 18-3 start now begins to look a little suspicious.

He goes on to point out some interesting details, including the 55 minutes it took to finish the 1st inning, OU sent 17 hitters to the plate in the 1st inning, OU hit 11 home runs. Read his summary for more tidbits.

■ #19 Oklahoma State took 2 of 3 from unranked Nebraska

• From Big12Hardball.com:
Mike Anderson's big move, moving Mike Nesseth to the bullpen, paid off as Nebraska took the series from the Cowboys. Cowboys pitcher Andrew Oliver was chased in only 3.2 innings, giving up nine hits and seven earned runs, while Nebraska started Casey Hauptman and six other pitchers to hold the Cowboy bats at bay.