Price’s prediction was partly correct, because the Jayhawks’ bats ranked at the top of the Big 12 Conference in hitting for the majority of the season.

KU’s pitching, however, ranked dead last — and was perhaps the biggest reason Kansas didn’t improve on last year’s 35-28 mark or make it back to the conference tournament after debuting there a year ago.

“It takes a lot of character to play through the adversity when you’re buried at the bottom of the standings like that,” said Price, whose squad ended its season with four consecutive conference wins to improve its record to 31-31-1.

While the Jayhawks might have lost out on the opportunity to fulfill their lofty postseason goals, Kansas did record a few milestones this year.

KU’s second consecutive 30-win season marked the first time the Jayhawks had accomplished the feat in a decade, and just the third team to do so in program history.

The Jayhawks enjoyed a 24-12 mark in the nonconference action, even holding a lead in each game of a three-game series against perennial power Stanford, before losing each one.

But when Big 12 play began, the Jayhawks faded — going 7-19 against conference competition.

Kansas recorded only one of its seven Big 12 victories against schools from the South division — which includes the teams that make up the top six seeds in the conference tournament.

“It’s an incredible conference, man,” Price said. “Every weekend you face somebody in the Top 25, and you got to be special to play through it.”

Oftentimes Kansas’ offense provided enough power — scoring 97 more runs than its opponents, but the Jayhawks’ pitching struggled.

Despite the fact that 11 of KU’s 24 new players this season were hurlers, only one KU pitcher — who started 10 games or more — had a winning record.

Junior Clint Schambach was 4-3 with a 5.26 earned run average in 25 appearances.

Jayhawks ace Ryan Knippschild was 7-8 with a 5.25 ERA and led the team with 79 strikeouts.

“He’s been instrumental to us in terms of helping turn the program around,” Price said of the senior Knippschild, who transferred from American River Community College in Sacramento, Calif., last season.

“I think our pitching will be better next year, but if we hadn’t gotten those performances from him it probably would have taken a couple more years to get that started.”

Price also said that despite the disappointment of not being able to play this week, his program was ahead of the pace he thought it would be after two seasons.

“I still think we are two years ahead of where I thought we would be at this point in time, and I think the last two weeks has proven that out,” said Price, who needs just 16 more wins to record his 700th victory in 25 years of coaching high school, junior college and NCAA baseball teams.

6Sports video: Jayhawk focus shifts to next year

“We still got some weaknesses we need to address, and some improvements we need to make in our program,” Price continued, “but we’ve taken some incredible strides in two short years.”

Next year, Price will have the daunting task of replacing the heart of his batting order.

Seniors Ryan Baty and Matt Tribble suited up for the last time in KU’s sweep over Kansas State in Manhattan on Sunday.

While Baty broke Tribble’s school-record consecutive game hit streak with 21 games on Sunday, and fell just a hit short of tying the program’s all-time hit mark — Tribble missed a majority of the season because of injury.

Two juniors, third baseman Travis Metcalf and catcher Sean Richardson, may also have played their last games in a KU uniform.

Metcalf led the Big 12 with 18 home runs, a KU record, while Richardson was tops in RBIs with 69.

But Price said it could be even harder to fill the contributions those leaders had on the team’s morale and ensuring the Jayhawks would continue to compete down the stretch.

“When we were six or seven games under .500 a month ago, I feel really good that we continued to play every day and we fought our way back to .500,” Price said. I feel like that is a pretty tremendous accomplishment.”