Texas Baseball survives midnight scare to win Game 2 of Big 12 Tournament

Texas Baseball survived a midnight scare to take Game 2 of their Big 12 Tournament run Thursday night in Oklahoma City.

It was nearly disaster just before midnight, but Texas Baseball held on for a 5-4 win over Kansas in the winner’s bracket. [ Full Box Score ]

Now, Texas gets Friday off before facing the winner of TCU vs. Kansas on Saturday. If Texas beats the TCU-Kansas winner, they advance to the conference tournament title game on Sunday.

Throughout the game, it looked like Texas was going to cruise to their second tournament win after knocking off Oklahoma on Thursday.

But, things got interesting very quickly at the end of the game.

Texas starter Nolan Kingham took a 5-2 lead into the top of the ninth. Kingham was absolutely brilliant except for a minor hiccup in the fourth inning.

In the ninth, Kingham struck out the first hitter, gave up a single to the second batter, and struck out the third hitter. It looked like Texas was going to win before midnight playing the last game on Thursday.

With two outs in the inning, Kansas’ Jaxx Groshans jacked a monster two-run home run to left field.

Suddenly, it was 5-4 Texas. Kingham remained in the game to face KU’s David Kyriacou, who promptly smashed a pitch to right field. For a few seconds, it looked like Texas was going to experience a sickening feeling of giving up the lead, but the ball hung up in the air and was caught on the warning track to end the game.

Overall, Big 12 first-teamer Kingham recorded a complete game for the win and saved the bullpen for the weekend.

But, the midnight scare was more than Longhorns fans bargained for after watching Texas miss multiple opportunities to blow this game open.

https://twitter.com/Big12DN/status/867978535842979840

Texas Baseball Needs to Sharpen RISP Hitting

Texas opened up a 4-0 lead in the second inning thanks to some solid situational hitting.

But, the Longhorns bats went silent until the sixth inning when they tacked on a fifth run to make the score 5-2.

In between the second and sixth innings, during the sixth inning, and during the seventh and eighth innings, Texas had runners all over the place.

But, the Longhorns struggled to score except in that second inning.

Overall in the game, Texas collected 11 hits, drew five walks, and reached base on two Kansas errors. Unfortunately, Texas also struck out nine times. A few of those were in key situations with runners in scoring position.

Texas’ bugaboo this season has been not adding more runs after jumping out to early leads. The Longhorns avoided a scare Thursday night against Kansas. But, if the Horns want to win the Big 12 Tournament and make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament, they are going to have to come up with more hits with RISP.

Next: Game 1 - Texas beats OU

We’ll see if Texas brings a more consistent approach with runners on base on Saturday when they play again. Will they face TCU for the first time in the tournament or Kansas again? We’ll find out Friday.