Kansas opens regional baseball with 6-3 win over Northeastern
Kansas opened up NCAA regional play with a 6-3 win over Northeastern on Friday afternoon. The Jayhawks scored three runs in the second inning and added two insurance runs in the bottom of the eighth to pull away and advance to Saturday nights winner’s bracket game.
Starting pitcher Dominic Voegele turned in another solid outing going seven innings giving up three earned runs before Bode Rahe came in to close out the last two frames.
[Updated regional brackets and scores]
Cade Baldridge led the way with three hits while Tyson LeBlanc and Dariel Osoria added two each. LeBlanc, Osoria and Mungarrieta homered for the Jayhawks.
Kansas advances to Saturday night’s game to face the winner of Arkansas-Missouri State.
What they said: Postgame comments
Here are some key comments from Dan Fitzgerald, Voegele and LeBlanc after the game.
Opening comment from Fitzgerald:
Awesome baseball game against a very impressive Northeastern team. They are as disciplined a team as you can play against, and they’re so tough to put away. Dom had to work for every single one of those punchouts today, as did Bode. They’re just so tough.
Then they had that stretch in the middle where they got the leadoff guy on, I think, four innings in a row. So that’s a really good team that we just played. But really proud of our guys. I thought we battled. Obviously, these two were fantastic, but amazing crowd. It was unbelievable to see the stadium like that, and so many people have worked so hard to make it like that in months of planning, and then on the baseball side, years of planning for that.
So special day and excited to play tomorrow night.
Fitzgerald on Northeastern putting pressure on with runners:
Our game plan didn’t really change from the pitching side because I felt like we had a pretty good game plan going into it on how to get them out and how to attack each hitter. So I just trusted what Coach Scott kept calling and tried to hit all my spots, and it ended up working out.
LeBlanc on setting the school record in home runs:
It was an awesome feeling. Super proud of the two guys in front of me that hit home runs as well. It was an awesome feeling to be able to go out there and compete and put some runs on the board early. Stuck to my approach that’s been working and put a good swing on it.
Voegele on catching the runner stealing home:
I saw him running down the line, but I had no clue that he was going to do that before I started my windup. So, I mean, I had a changeup grip and ready to throw the changeup. So I was just focusing on not throwing it in the dirt and just getting it to Augie.
Full postgame press conference
Box score from Northeastern game
