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

Kansas' Dominic Voegele pitches during the game against Kansas State on Friday, April 18, 2025, in Lawrence.

The Kansas baseball season took such a positive turn last weekend that the Jayhawks may even be on the far fringes of hosting an NCAA regional.

The eventual top 16 seeds in the NCAA Tournament get to host four-team regionals at their home ballparks, and even after sweeping Big 12 regular-season champion West Virginia on the road, KU is currently on the outside looking in at No. 23 in RPI — but not totally out of it if the Jayhawks can secure some high-value wins in the days ahead. KU coach Dan Fitzgerald acknowledged on Monday that they are “a part of that conversation.”

That being said, Fitzgerald also doesn’t want his team to “spend a bunch of time talking about, ‘If this happens and that happens, maybe we can host and we can do this and we can do that.'”

“I said, ‘Or we can just stick to what we’ve done the entire year, and that is focus on the day in front of us,'” he told reporters following KU’s practice on Monday. “I said, ‘That’s probably the right path for our program.'”

Directly in front of the Jayhawks at this moment is their first game at the Big 12 Championship, set for 4 p.m. on Thursday at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. It will be televised on ESPNU and ESPN+.

No. 2 seed KU will take on No. 7 seed Oklahoma State, which it swept at Hoglund Ballpark during the regular season, but which has now won 10 of its last 11 games after beating No. 10 Baylor 4-3 on Wednesday evening thanks to a pair of key errors by the Bears.

KU and Oklahoma State have reversed roles somewhat this year after OSU was the early favorite in the league and the Jayhawks were picked to finish ninth in the preseason poll. However, the Cowboys started to round into form not long after their three losses in Lawrence, including one on a walk-off three-run home run by Sawyer Smith, and then found their footing during the late-season run, capped off by a sweep of previously second-place Arizona State that put them back squarely in the NCAA Tournament picture.

Over the course of conference play, OSU featured the league’s best pitching staff by ERA, hits, walks and opponent batting average. Longtime pitching coach Rob Walton, who is retiring after the season, figured out a strong rotation. Friday night starter Harrison Bodendorf, a lefty Hawaii transfer and the Big 12’s co-newcomer of the year, allowed a total of four earned runs in his next nine appearances after conceding three to the Jayhawks, and at one point pitched a 10-inning complete game in a road win at Arizona.

Fellow transfers Sean Youngerman (Westmont), a second-team all-league selection, and Mario Pesca (St. John’s) have slid nicely into weekend starting roles down the stretch, and Youngerman, who served earlier in the year as the Cowboys’ closer, has held his ERA around 2.00 for much of the season. Fortunately for the Jayhawks, both pitched against Baylor. Youngerman started and went 4 1/3 innings, and then Pesca took the next 3 2/3 before Gabe Davis closed the game.

OSU has not had quite as much to offer offensively, although second baseman Brayden Smith is the Big 12’s player and newcomer of the week after he went 8-for-12 with three doubles, two home runs and six RBIs in the ASU series. In conference play he batted a team-high .343.

Five of the Cowboys’ regular starters batted .211 or lower in league play. No other team had more than two players under that threshold. One of those for OSU was Nolan Schubart, the league’s preseason player of the year, who does have nine home runs since the start of the conference slate.

KU’s own offense has cooled off slightly in conference play but has still led the league in home runs and walks. The Jayhawks have continued to rely on Dick Howser Trophy semifinalist and first-team All-Big 12 selection Brady Ballinger, who is hitting .308 with a 1.053 OPS in league games, and designated hitter Dariel Osoria, KU’s other most consistent threat. Breakout star Jackson Hauge will now look to break out of a bit of a late-season slump; since hitting the go-ahead home run in a memorable Friday night comeback against Kansas State over a month ago, he has just one homer and has batted 12-for-69 (.174).

The Jayhawks’ first-round bye ensures KU can treat the Big 12 tournament like, in the best-case scenario, a three-game series, with starts for the formidable duo of Dominic Voegele and Cooper Moore (both among the league leaders in innings pitched and strikeouts) and the newly resurgent Kannon Carr, who pitched his best game of the year in the Jayhawks’ shutout against West Virginia on Saturday.

Much-needed rest: KU’s sweep against West Virginia ensured it did not need to sweat the possibility of earning a top-four seed at all. If the series had gone south and teams like Arizona, Arizona State and TCU had taken care of business, the Jayhawks could have fallen as far as No. 7 and had to play on Wednesday. Fitzgerald said the additional rest has been a boon to his team, as KU has been “running guys ragged.” He highlighted left fielder Tommy Barth and catcher Ian Francis as players who got a particularly important reprieve, with Mike Koszewski and Chase Diggins stepping into the lineup on Saturday. Some pitchers were arguably too rested — the Jayhawks only needed to use two combined relievers, Alex Breckheimer and Manning West, in their three games at WVU — to the point that KU engaged in some live pitcher-hitter action in its practice at Dallas Baptist on Monday.

Somewhat sung heroes: Asked on Monday about who he considered an “unsung hero” of this year’s team, Fitzgerald suggested that such players would not be considered unsung within the KU dugout. But he took time to highlight Koszewski, a fifth-year senior who has excelled in a reduced role: “In his three years with us, this is the least amount of at-bats, the least amount of starts, and his impact, his attitude, his presence, his leadership, his all that stuff — we’re not nearly as good as we are without him.” He also mentioned Diggins, who has provided significant value along with Koszewski as a late-game defensive replacement, and TJ Williams, KU’s go-to pinch runner and a true freshman who is one of Fitzgerald’s favorite players he has ever coached.

Long road back: It’s hard to imagine KU deviating from what has worked so far this season, but pitching depth has been one of the Jayhawks’ weaknesses at times, and they might be getting a boost with the expected return of Patrick Steitz. The 6-foot-8 redshirt junior from Peoria, Arizona, started six games for KU in 2024 and then got shut down and had Tommy John surgery. The Jayhawks tried to ease him back into action this season with some early success, but he didn’t pitch for more than three weeks after a bad first inning against Milwaukee on March 9, and has again been absent since two brief midweek starts in early April. Fitzgerald said on Monday that Steitz has started throwing again and should be available for the postseason.