Kansas drops game one in the Super Regionals to Oklahoma
The Jayhawks postseason winning streak came to an abrupt end on Saturday evening at Hoglund Ballpark. Kansas gave up four runs in the fourth inning and three more in the fifth and Oklahoma never looked back losing 8-1.
KU’s ace Dom Voegele was roughed up for seven hits and seven runs with only three of them earned. Voegele gave up three home runs before giving way to Manning West.
[Preview on the Sooners heading into the Super Regionals]
Oklahoma broke open a scoreless game in the fourth on singles by Jaxon Willis and Trey Gambill. Brendan Bock got on base with an error from Tyson LeBlanc. After Oklahoma punched a run across Dayton Tockey hit a three-run homer to left center.
The Sooners kept it going in the fifth on Camden Johnson’s two-tun homer followed by a solo shot from Trey Gambill for a 7-0 lead.
After five innings the Jayhawks offense only generated one hit. They broke through in the eighth with a solo shot to right field from Jordan Bach.
Kansas will try to keep their College World Series hopes alive on Sunday in game two. First pitch is scheduled for 5 p.m. CT.
Post-game comments from Dan Fitzgerald
Opening statement:
Tip your cap to OU tonight. I thought they played a great game and their starter did a really nice job. They played clean baseball for the most part and took advantage of some mistakes we made. But I’m proud of how the guys competed. I thought our preparation was awesome. I thought the way we stayed in it throughout the game was great. There was belief until the very end that we were going to come back.
It’s tough to go undefeated in the postseason. As much as I hate to admit it, we were probably, at some point, going to have to persevere through a loss. So here’s our opportunity, and I couldn’t be more confident in my team and how these guys compete, how they prepare, and how they’ll be ready to go tomorrow.
On facing Oklahoma starting pitcher Rager:
Well, Rager was outstanding, and we just couldn’t get into a groove offensively. His fastball played up. He’s got massive extension. You look inside the metrics of it and he’s an outlier in terms of extension.
He’s a big kid to begin with, and then you throw in some outlier qualities and it becomes tough. But he did a nice job mixing pitches. Skip is a great pitch caller and did a nice job of mixing. At the end of the day, he executed and we just couldn’t get into a rhythm.
We had a hard time getting the leadoff guy on, and it’s tough to produce a lot of offense when you’re chasing it. When you’re down 4-0, getting that leadoff guy on is important.
We just weren’t able to get into a groove.
What were your thoughts on Dom Voegele:
His stuff was good. He’d probably like to have a couple pitches back that they took advantage of.
We had a couple opportunities to get off the field behind him defensively. There was a double-play ball that maybe gets us out of that inning that we don’t execute on, which again, that’s baseball.
You look at some mistakes that are made during a game and the effort, the intensity, the preparation, all that stuff is an A-plus. Sometimes the game is just tough to play, and it was for us tonight.
I think Dom would like to have a couple back, but at the end of the day, they strung it together and got the hit when we didn’t.
