Big 12 Tournament: MU vs. Texas A&M

Thursday's Big 12 Tournament Schedule:

3:00 PM Texas vs. Texas Tech

7:30 PM Texas A&M vs. Missouri

■ Missouri Tigers pull biggest upset of college baseball tournaments (ky3.com)

The Big 12's player of the year showed why he deserves that honor in the conference's baseball tourney opener on Wednesday. Aaron Senne's two-run double was the key hit, lifting the 8th-seeded Missouri Tigers past the conference champion Texas Longhorns, 7-3.

■ Former Wildcat pitches Mizzou past Texas (Independence Examiner)

Former Blue Springs High School star Nick Tepesch is heating up at the right time.

The junior right-hander fired his second complete game in his last three starts, leading the University of Missouri baseball team to a 7-3 win over No. 1-ranked and top-seeded Texas Wednesday on the opening day of the Big 12 Championship at Bricktown Ballpark.

Tepesch struck out five and allowed three runs, just two of which were earned, to win his sixth game of the season. It was his second career complete game, with his first coming just two weeks ago in the form of a shutout of Nebraska.

Tepesch was happy to get the complete game to preserve the pitching staff for the remainder of the tournament.

“It was real important to finish the game because it saves everyone else for the games coming up,” Tepesch said. “I felt just as good in the ninth (inning) as I did in the first.”

■ Aggies Insider: Aggies Idol? Minks, A&M hitting notes (mysanantonio.com)

“That's the most nervous I've been in my life,” said Minks, a senior pitcher from West Columbia. “And there's not a close second.”

Minks has appeared in 55 games, including 21 this season, over a decent A&M career. He's faced hitters from rival Texas and thrown in three NCAA tournament games. That stuff was easy compared to hitting the right notes on a most difficult tune to croon.

“I finally stopped shaking around the middle,” Minks said of belting out the anthem Sunday, before the Aggies defeated Kansas State. “I wasn't worried about remembering the lyrics, as much as my voice cracking.”

■ A&M aiming for conference tourney title (AggieSports.com)

Texas A&M's Rob Childress views this week as the beginning of a new season.

The biggest problem is that the same old foe is in the way.

Texas rolled through the Big 12 regular season, setting records for victories (24) and consecutive wins (17). The league gets another shot at the No. 1 team in the nation starting Wednesday at the Big 12 tournament at Oklahoma City's AT&T Bricktown Ballpark.

"I was really proud of the way we finished the regular season, but we leave tomorrow on a business trip and we are going up there to win a championship," Childress said. "Texas won the regular season trophy and regular season ring and we are going up there to win a championship and come home with a trophy and a ring. Anything less will be disappointing."

MU Recruits

■ Moody baseball is unlike anything else (Lake Travis View)

Lake Travis (28-16) has dealt with Moody’s cross-town rivals Calallen the last two years in the Region IV semifinal, and was exposed to a world of passionate high school baseball fans that follow a storied program. Trojan fans are like Wildcat fans, except there are twice as many and they all drank a case of energy drink before they came to the ballpark. Their Facebook fan page has 1,247 fans and their Twitter feed is followed by 460 people for baseball alone
. . .
The Trojans (34-3) are coming off an incredible 2009 season in which they narrowly lost the state championship to Texas High 4-3. They are led by staff ace and Missouri commit Michael Franco, who is 14-0 this season. With the series going from Wednesday to Saturday, it means both Franco and Lake Travis ace and Baylor commit Brad Kuntz will be available to start both the first and third games if they’re needed.