On to the Big 12 Tournament !!!

■ The Tigers finished 3rd in the Big 12 regular season race, which is amazing considering the difficulties this team went through earlier in the season. At the beginning of April many were wondering if the Tigers would even qualify for the Big 12 Tournament. Congratulations to the 2009 Tigers for fighting their way back, all the way to #3 !!

In our "You make the call" poll before the season, 36% of voters selected the Tigers to be #1 in the conference. The second highest vote total was 20% picking MU at 3rd.

LINK: Detailed breakdown of the final standings.

■ The brackets are set and the games are scheduled for the 2009 Big 12 Tournament. The 8 qualifiers are separated into two Pools. Each team will play 1 game against each team in its pool in games scheduled from this Wednesday through Saturday. The champions from each pool meet in the championship game on Sunday at 1PM (the final game will be broadcast on FSN):

Pool 1: #1 Texas, #4 Kansas State, # 5 Kansas, #8 Baylor
Pool 2: #2 Oklahoma, #3 Missouri, #6 Texas A&M, #7 Texas Tech
#9 Oklahoma State and #10 Nebraska failed to qualify for the tournament

Detailed Schedule (Complete bracket HERE). Game times may vary depending on length of prior games:

Wednesday
Game 1: 9:00 AM - KSU vs. KU
Game 2: 12:30 PM - UT vs. BU
Game 3: 4:00 PM - MU vs. A&M
Game 4: 7:30 PM - OU vs. TT

Thursday
Game 5: 3:00 PM - UT vs. KU
Game 6: 7:30 PM - KSU vs. BU

Friday
Game 7: 3:00 PM - MU vs. TT
Game 8: 7:30 PM - OU vs. A&M

Saturday
Game 9: 9:00 AM - KU vs. BU
Game 10: 12:30 PM - UT vs. KSU
Game 11: 4:00 PM - OU vs. MU
Game 12: 7:30 PM - A&M vs. TT

Sunday
Game 13: 1:00 PM - Championship

If teams are tied, head-to-head competition will be used to break the tie. In case the teams are still tied, the highest-seeded team amongst the tied teams advances to the championship

LINKS:

Video for all games is available LIVE on the Internet at Big 12 Tournament Central.

Ticket information
Single-session tickets for the Phillips 66 Big 12 Baseball Championship will go on sale at 9 a.m. on Monday, May 18. Prices range from $13-44, while all-session tickets are available from $92-232. All tickets for the event can be purchased by calling the Oklahoma City RedHawks Box Office at (405) 218-1000, or online at http://www.ticketreturn.com/.

■ The Columbia Tribune talks about Saturday's win in Steaking their claims:

“Lollis and Folgia made two great plays today,” Hicks (5-2) said. “And I owe both of them steak dinners for what they did for me out there.”

Lollis interjected that he would probably get Taco Bell. That was fine with
Hicks.

“He doesn’t want steak, I’ll give him a Taco Bell instead,” Hicks said.

The exchange was a joke, Lollis explained. Lollis and Hicks were high school teammates at Houston Christian. Another Houston native, John Whittleman, now an infielder for Double-A Frisco in the Texas Rangers organization, seemed to always renege on his dinner offers.

“He was always all talk: ‘Yeah, I’m gonna take you and Scooter out for steak dinners,’ ” Lollis said. “He gives us Taco Bell on him.”

■ The Columbia Missourian reports Missouri baseball wraps up regular season with win:

It wasn't the prettiest baseball game but the Missouri Tigers are just glad they
won. . . .Combined, the two teams committed five errors.

■ The Columbia Missourian has a feature on Phil McCormick transforms to find success on the mound:

McCormick, a redshirt sophomore, decided to make his delivery so funky that hitters would have difficulty adjusting to it. So weird that they would have to work to see the pitches coming out of his hand.

With each pitch, McCormick drew his arm behind his head then snapped it sideways to deliver the ball at a strange angle to the plate. When his arm dropped down from behind his head mid-delivery, it looked like he was swinging a bat with one arm.

"I'm pretty sure the last time I threw a pitch like that was Little League," McCormick said.
. . .
So while most of the team was in Arizona, McCormick went to work changing aomething he had been doing the same way since he was in Little League. Pitching coach Tony Vitello told McCormick to work on it without pitching off a mound but McCormick was so happy with the results after a week of doing it that he pitched off a mound defying orders and even recorded video evidence of it and tried to send it to Vitello.

"I really wanted to see what I could do," McCormick said. "I had to defy him a little bit and he was really excited to see it but I couldn't send it via e-mail. I noticed the difference right away the next week when I got to throw against hitters and they couldn't hit the ball."