Day 1 of the Big 12 baseball tournament belonged to the underdogs, including Texas Tech
ARLINGTON — Texas, Oklahoma State and West Virginia each claimed a share of the Big 12 regular-season baseball title. If any of the three emerges as the Big 12 tournament champion, they'll do it with a multi-day run through the losers' bracket.
Upsets ruled in Wednesday's first round of the tournament with No. 8 seed Kansas beating top seed Texas 6-3, No. 7 seed Oklahoma beating No. 2 seed Oklahoma State 9-5 and No. 6 seed Texas Tech shading No. 3 seed West Virginia 6-2.
More: Big 12 tournament pairings
"That's the telltale sign you've got a good league, if the three co-champs all lose the first game and the lower seeds win the first game," WVU coach Randy Mazey said. "The lower seeds aren't lower seeds because their teams aren't better. Any team can go 2-and-oh in this tournament and any team can go oh-and-2, every single year. That's a fact.
"You've just got to hope you play well enough to be one of the ones that go 2-and-oh."
Tech coach Tim Tadlock took it as a sign of teams evolving over the course of the season.
"For the longest time, our league's been very good top to bottom, and it's no big surprise," he said. "You have to earn the right to win, it seems like to us, every weekend, every day of the weekend. I think in our league, it's a lot of really good baseball teams in there, and there were a lot of teams with a lot of turnover going into this year. A lot of players have developed across the league and become really good players, good pitchers on both sides of it."
How badly Mazey and Tadlock needed to win the first-round game might have been reflected in their selection of starting pitchers. Sixth in the conference and with an RPI at No. 42, Tech is not a slam dunk to make an NCAA regional. The Red Raiders (38-19) went with Mason Molina, their No. 1 starter.
West Virginia (39-17), a conference champion for the first time since 1996 and with an RPI at No. 18, gave redshirt freshman David Hagaman his first career start. The Mountaineers seem assured of making a regional, though Mazey rejected that suggestion and whether it played a part in not using top starters Ben Hampton or Blaine Traxel.
"I'll never feel like we're assured of being in the NCAA tournament. I thought that when I sat here last year, and that didn't happen," he said, referring to his 2022 team's 33-22 finish. "We're not going to worry about the NCAA tournament. ... If we do advance and have to get another start, I think Hagaman showed enough that he's earned another start if we get to that point."
West Virginia had reason to feel worst about being a tri-champion, given the Mountaineers led the conference before being swept in a three-game series by Texas in the final week.
Texas Tech made the Mountaineers feel a little worse, dealing them their fourth consecutive loss and fifth in seven games. Molina (5-2) allowed four hits in six innings, and Brandon Beckel got a three-inning save, his sixth save of the season.
Two weeks ago in Morgantown, Molina went 4 2/3 innings and Beckel struck out seven over the last four innings of a 5-3 Tech victory.
Going into the tournament, Tadlock said there was no doubt about handing the ball to Molina on less than his usual seven days between starts.
"We really felt like going in, to win the tournament, Mason needed to throw game 1," Tadlock said. "We try to win every day, regardless what day of the week it is and where we are. Any time you get Mason on full rest — which to me five or six nights is definitely full rest — and he had that and he's ready to go so we pitched him."
The sophomore lefthander had two runners on after two walks in the first and two on again after two singles in the third. He escaped both unscored upon, picking off WVU leadoff hitter Tevin Tucker to end the third. Outside of a solo homer by Caleb McNeely in the fourth, Molina got through the sixth trouble-free.
"I would say this wasn't one of my days that I was on with everything," he said, "but I was pretty proud of the way I came back. Me and (catcher) Hudson (White) talked about this between innings with (assistant coaches Matt) Gardner and J-Bob (Thomas): No matter what you have today, go out there and pitch like this is your last inning. Just keep going out there with a super-competitive mindset of, 'I'm going to get you out, you're not going to beat me and you're going to have to earn it.' "
Hagaman went four innings, giving up four runs and six hits and striking out seven.
Hagaman, in his previous six appearances, all out of the bullpen, had put together a string of 13 1/3 scoreless innings with only three hits allowed and 14 strikeouts. That included 3 2/3 innings against Tech and three innings at Texas in his last two times out before Wednesday.
"Actually, Hagaman, when he threw against us out there on Sunday, he threw the ball awful good," Tadlock said, "and then couple of nights ago, I had the (WVU-Texas) game on from last week and he threw the ball awful good last weekend, too. And so he's a young man with a really good arm, a really good slider.
"They've got pitching. As far as who's pitching, we don't get into if you're pitching your 1, 2 or ... That guy's got a good future in front of him."
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Day 1 of the Big 12 baseball tournament belonged to the underdogs, including Texas Tech
