Time is running out on Kansas University’s baseball team.
The Jayhawks, hoping to qualify for their first postseason in three years, will enter this weekend’s Big 12 series with Texas Tech at 21-21 overall, 7-14 in the league. They’re currently in ninth place in the league, and only the top eight teams will play in the league tournament.
KU has nine Big 12 games remaining.
“I think we have to win seven to get in, but seven’s not a sure thing,” Kansas coach Bobby Randall said. “I haven’t looked at the standings, and I won’t until it’s all over. But we have to make some noise. We’ve got nine games left, and we have to win. We can’t wait any longer.”
Missouri (23-16, 8-10) sits in eighth place.
KU’s weekend opponent, Texas Tech, is in fifth at 25-18 and 13-8.
“Texas Tech isn’t going to make it easy for us,” Randall said. “They just beat Texas two of three. It’s the same old story. We seem to get teams when they’re hot. I know players and teams can get hot. That’s what we need to do. We’ve never been hot as a team. We’ve played pretty consistently all year, but there hasn’t been one Big 12 series where we’ve been hot. I keep waiting for that to happen.”
He’s also waiting for Kansas’ offense to come around. Pitching and defense have kept KU in almost all of its games this season; a toothless offense has allowed the Jayhawks to win just one league series.
“We’re just not able to score enough runs,” Randall said. “We’ve played good baseball and battled hard, but offensively we haven’t been able to put out a full lineup every day that’s been good one through nine. Our first five or six hitters are pretty good, but when we get to seven-eight-nine, we have to wait for it to turn over again.
“We’re better than we were two or three weeks ago. I see that. I’m optimistic, but at the same time we’re realistic. We won some games early, but we let some conference games get away, and that makes it more important to win at the end.”
Game times — to accommodate TV broadcast on College Sports Southwest, which is not available locally — are 7:07 tonight, 2:07 p.m. Saturday and 1:07 p.m. Sunday. Former KU pitcher Jamie Splittorff will call Sunday’s game for CSS.
KU’s starting pitchers will be Peter Smart tonight, Rusty Philbrick on Saturday and Brandon O’Neal in the finale.
