photo by: Emma Crouch/Kansas Athletics

Kansas head coach Dan Fitzgerald instructs his team during practice at Hoglund Ballpark in Lawrence, on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024.

Faced with a two-week road trip in Texas to open the season, the Kansas baseball team handled the challenge with aplomb by winning all seven games.

The Jayhawks completed a sweep of Tarleton State on Sunday afternoon, taking down the Texans 11-7 at the Tarleton Baseball Complex in Stephenville, Texas.

KU put up four runs in the sixth inning and four more in the eighth after Tarleton cut its deficit on multiple occasions. Head coach Dan Fitzgerald said it was clear why Tarleton had been able to win a WAC championship in 2024.

“You just play until the final out and in games like this it’s so important that you just continue to tack on,” Fitzgerald said in a press release on Sunday. “This Tarleton team is really good. They’re going to win a lot of games this year and they’re very dangerous as they showed at the end of the game and throughout the weekend. Proud of the effort and the guys for continuing to tack on.”

It was important for the Jayhawks to get offense in repeated bursts throughout the weekend.

In the first half of Saturday’s doubleheader, KU went up 3-0 early but promptly surrendered its advantage after a shaky inning by ace Dominic Voegele. First baseman Brady Ballinger put the Jayhawks back ahead on a home run immediately, though, and right fielder Jackson Hauge got on the board in later innings with a sacrifice fly and a homer of his own. Relievers Connor Maggi, Alex Breckheimer, Robbie Knowles and Eric Lin combined to allow two hits in four shutout earnings, with Lin picking up his first save in the 6-4 victory.

The second game on Saturday actually required the Jayhawks to play from behind, but they rallied in the middle innings, propelled by another home run from Hauge and multiple key errors by the Texans, to score six straight runs. Tarleton nearly tied the game in the bottom of the seventh after an RBI groundout by Jaime Perez, but KU was able to pick off Slade McCloud at third base with the Jayhawks clinging to a 6-5 lead. Dariel Osoria drove in a run in the ninth to set the final margin at 7-5.

Cooper Moore, who said he was “begging for the ball” from pitching coach Brandon Scott, got a save of his own after pitching the final 2 1/3 innings.

“I think all in all we did a really good job playing as a team today,” he said in a press release. “I felt comfortable going out there and closing out a game again. It felt like the old days.”

Patrick Steitz, still working his way back into action after Tommy John surgery, posted KU’s best starting pitching performance of the weekend with three shutout innings to open Sunday’s matchup, and the Jayhawks went up early on an RBI groundout by Ballinger and the first of two home runs on the day by shortstop Sawyer Smith. But the Texans got a couple back in the fourth inning charged to Jake Cubbler, and then three more, including a two-run homer by Sergio Guerra, after KU had gone up as many as five runs.

Four extra-base hits in the eighth inning gave the Jayhawks enough of a cushion that they were unaffected by Tarleton’s final rally in the ninth.

The Jayhawks are 7-0 for the first time since 2014 and now get to play back in Lawrence. They will host Omaha for a four-game series beginning Thursday at 3 p.m., although Saturday’s game takes place at Equity Bank Park in Wichita instead of Hoglund Ballpark.