Kansas Baseball during the Ritch Price era

I just wanted to pass on some raw numbers here.

A few notes.  The Big-12 is a hell of a baseball conference.  Most years six of the ten teams make the NCAA 64-team post-season tournament.  KU has never had a winning record in the Big-12.  The closest the Jayhawks have gotten was in 2006 when they went 13-14 and finished 5th.  Only the top eight teams in the Big-12 are invited to the conference post-season tournament.  Just as in basketball the team that wins the conference tournament gets an auto-bid to the NCAA tournament.  Under Ritch Price KU made the Big-12 tournament three times and three times they finished 9th and thus were not invited.

The 2006 club was probably the second best team to ever play for Kansas.  That year Kansas won the Big-12 tournament and so had an auto-bid.  They entered the Big-12 tournament a bubble team with an RPI rank of #38.  Kansas was sent to Corvalis for the first round regional.  They went 1-2 there losing to eventual national champion #4 Oregon State and spliting two games with #25 Hawaii.

The 2006 team gelled as the season went on.  On this day in 2006 the team was 19-12.  They kicked into high gear once they hit the toughest part of their schedule.  From April 1st forward KU went 24-12 while playing 15 games vs. ranked opponents.  The Hawks got better as the competition improved.

Maybe I will regret writing this in a few weeks, but I am getting a similar vibe from the 2009 team that I got from the 2006 team.