Facing a sweep in Lubbock the Jayhawks responded convincingly.  Kansas unloaded on Texas Tech starter Miles Morgan by scoring seven runs in the first inning.  Morgan left the game without recording a single out.  The Hawks continued to score through the first seven innings of the game and at one point led by as much as 15-1.  The Red Raiders prevented the game from coming to a run-rule end after seven innings by scoring five runs of their own in the bottom of the seventh.  The final two frames produced no more action.

As you would expect of a team that collected 15 runs there were several offensive stars for Kansas yesterday.  Tony Thompson stood out by hitting two homeruns and driving in 3 RBI’s.  Thompson now has 12 homeruns on the year (two short of the all-time sophomore record set by Erik Morrison in 2006) and 50 RBI’s.  He might end up challenging some significant records before this season is over.  Brian Heere went 3-4 with 3 RBI’s  David Narodowski hit a single and a double and drove in four runs.  Jason Brunansky went 2-5 with 2 RBIs.  Preston Land continued to show signs he is coming alive at the plate by going 2-4 and drawing 2 walks.

The win will allow KU to return to Lawrence with some long term momentum.  It was the first road conference win for the Jayhawks.   In Big-12 games they are 7-2 at home and 1-5 on the road.  Kansas is in a three way tie for fourth place in the Big-12 with Kansas State and Oklahoma.

Kansas will be back in action Tuesday evening at Hoglund to face NAIA opponent Baker University.  Baker is located only a short distance from Lawrence and the game normally brings in a nice sized easy going crowd for a mid-week game.  The game was added to make up for an earlier rain out against Northwestern.  Admission is free.

Additional game notes and the box score after the break.

Lee Ridenhour (4-2) gave Kansas it’s best pitching performance of the weekend on Sunday.  Ridenhour apparently did not have his best stuff.  Of the 27 men he faced he only struck out one and gave up 8 singles and 3 walks.  Lee toughed it out and gave the team six effective innings of one-run baseball to earn his first conference win.  Travis Blankenship and Brett Bochy finished out the final three innings of the game.  Neither pitched particularly well.  Blankenship in particular only retired one of the five men he faced and saw his ERA rise to 6.15.  Travis has been hit around quite a bit over the last two weeks.  I hope this is a temporary situation.

Link to KU recap

Apr 19, 2009 at Lubbock, TX (Dan Law Field)

Score by Innings                    R  H  E
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Kansas.............. 702 104 100 - 15 15  0
Texas Tech.......... 000 010 500 -  6 14  2
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