photo by: Sarah Buchanan/Special to the Journal-World

The Jayhawks celebrate Kansas sophomore Brady Ballinger’s home run scoring the game in the fifth inning against Omaha on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025.

The Jayhawks played “too amped up,” as head coach Dan Fitzgerald described it, for three hours and 21 minutes in their home opener against Omaha on Thursday afternoon.

“We didn’t play good baseball at all, all the way through three hours, all eight innings as a team, we didn’t play the best that we could have,” infielder Chase Diggins said. “But it’s never give up, get to the ninth inning, taking one pitch at a time, taking one out, one at-bat at a time, and just try to string something together.”

Those three-plus hours of mediocre play ultimately didn’t matter after the last 13 minutes, when Kansas — trailing 8-6 and down to its last three outs — hit a game-tying two-run home run courtesy of Diggins and a walk-off grand slam off the bat of leadoff man Dariel Osoria, in his first home game as a Jayhawk, to win 12-8.

“I can’t even describe it, I can’t really put it into words,” Osoria said postgame, after his teammates mobbed him at home plate and ripped off his jersey before he had a chance to register what was happening. “That was just an unbelievable moment. If you would have asked me if I was going to be doing that earlier today, I don’t think so… My first Division I walk-off, coming into a crowd like this, super electric. I don’t think I had a crowd like this on my first walk-off (in junior college).

“They were backing us up even when we wasn’t capitalizing in certain situations, but coming up in that moment and interacting with the crowd… it felt really cool,” he said.

The Jayhawks hosted a crowd of 1,504 in their first game of the year at Hoglund Ballpark, which included a large swath of students who engaged in beer showers after two early home runs, were given pizza at the request of Director of Baseball Operations Luke Marbach and eventually made their way down to the field after the walk-off to celebrate the win with the team.

“We was not playing our best game at first, and they still stuck behind us and gave us support,” Osoria said. “So of course I had to go show some love to them on the field, just to show that we care just as much as they care for us.”

“The fact that they did it from the first pitch of the game to the last was absolutely incredible,” Fitzgerald added. “I mean, those suckers did not slow down once.”

Sophomore pitcher Cooper Moore went five solid innings for the Jayhawks, eventually settling in but giving up four runs, three of them earned, on four walks and seven hits. For the Mavericks, Connor Teinert matched Moore’s line pretty evenly, going five innings and giving up four runs, but racked up seven strikeouts along the way compared to Moore’s three.

Both starters got their team through the first half of the game in a good position, heading into the top of the fifth tied at four, thanks to a two-run home run by Brady Ballinger in the second to put Kansas on top, before Omaha responded with two runs of its own on two doubles in the third. A fielder’s choice and error by Sawyer Smith at shortstop gave the Mavericks their first lead of the game before a solo shot by Ballinger in the fifth tied the game heading to the second half of the contest.

The Jayhawks continued with some sloppy baseball, with Connor Maggi giving up a home run to Omaha’s leadoff man, Henry Zipay, for his third hit of the game before the Mavericks brought in another run on an error by Michael Brooks to take a 6-4 lead.

Kansas strung together three singles and a fielder’s choice to get in a run off Teinert’s replacement, Luke Gainer, before a two-run single by Omaha’s Jackson Trout gave the Mavericks their largest lead of the night at 8-5.

After loading the bases with no outs in the seventh, the Jayhawks squandered their opportunity to make up ground, recording three straight outs to leave three men on and remain down three runs. A clean top of the eighth gave Kansas yet another opportunity in its half of the frame, as the bottom of the order loaded the bases with two hit by pitches and a walk. This time the Jayhawks got a run across with two outs, but nothing more, leading them into the top of the ninth down 8-6.

Malakai Vetock took over on the mound and pushed the game to the brink, loading the bases before recording two strikeouts to strand the runners.

Given yet another opportunity, Kansas knew it couldn’t let this one slip away. After Michael Brooks drew a walk in a six-pitch battle of a plate appearance, Diggins came up for his fifth plate appearance of the game with a chance to tie it. He did exactly that with his first RBI of the night coming on a two-run home run that scraped the sky before carrying over the left field wall.

Coming into that at-bat, Diggins said his focus was to “not do anything different.”

“The last few games, I’ve just tried to be hitting the ball hard,” he said. “Sometimes I get away from that approach a little bit. But sometimes you get underneath a ball, and it goes out.”

Reed Scott came in to try to limit the damage for the Mavericks but promptly hit Counsell and Smith before intentionally walking Derek Cerda to bring on a new pitcher. The Jayhawks had the bases loaded with no outs, and Osoria came up to the plate with one goal.

“I was just really trying to put the ball in the air,” he said. “I knew we had a fast runner at third, so at that moment, I just knew, if I put the ball in the air, and (got) it far enough, I knew he’d be able to score.”

After taking a pair of balls sandwiched around a big hack, Osoria was able to achieve his goal in the most exciting way, by hitting a walk-off grand slam to complete his team’s comeback win in the ninth.

With the win, Kansas moves to 8-0 for the first time since starting 9-0 in 2014 and continues to make itself known in the national consciousness. The Jayhawks will look to extend their unbeaten record as they play Omaha in three more games across the weekend, beginning Friday at 3 p.m.