Oklahoma sent Kansas home from the Big 12 baseball tournament with a 4-2 victory Friday and needed just one inning of offense to do so.
The Sooners tagged senior left-hander Taylor Turski for four runs during his 41-pitch first inning and it was too big a hole for Kansas to overcome.
Kansas (27-30) defeated Texas, 3-2, and lost to Baylor 10-5 earlier in the tournament.
Turski threw five shutout innings after that and Tyler Davis and Ryan Cyr each pitched a scoreless inning.
Turks (2-9) wasn’t as effective as a senior, compared to his junior season, but that didn’t curb coach Ritch Price’s gratitude for his efforts.
“Hopefully, he gets an opportunity to catch on with someone and gets an opportunity to keep pitching after this,” Price said. “He’s been through two Tommy John surgeries, sat out three years out of high school, came back and had a remarkable career for us. … I think he was prepared to go as many pitches as it took today to give us an opportunity to win. We also used him out of the bullpen on Wednesday. So we were asking a lot of him, to bring him back. He’s a great competitor.”
Kansas cut the lead to 4-2 in the fourth. James Cosentino led off with a triple and scored on Devin Foyle’s one-out triple. Brenda Citta plated Foyle with a single and that spelled an end to the day’s scoring and in turn KU’s season.
