Thompson’s two homeruns and six RBIs not enough. OU avoids sweep by beating KU 10-9 in extra innings.

Oklahoma beat Kansas in extra innings yesterday to prevent the Jayhawks from earning the road sweep.  Sooner left fielder Casey Johnson hit a double over Jason Brunansky’s head with one out in the 10th inning to drive home the winning run and set the final score at 10-9.  Despite the result of Sunday’s game the Jayhawks accomplished a great deal this weekend.  Kansas won a Big-12 road series, which is always huge.  They went into the house of the #9 ranked team in the nation and took them down.  The Sooners were 19-2 at Dale Mitchell Park this year prior to the arrival of the Hawks.  It would appear the national buzz now has KU off the NCAA bubble so, short of a collapse in the season’s final seven games, it looks like KU will be dancing for the first time since 2006.

From a Kansas perspective there were two story lines in Sunday’s game, Tony Thompson’s monster day at the plate and Lee Ridenhour’s rough start.  Tony Thompson,  Kansas’ sophomore third baseman, furthered his case for Big-12 player of the year by smacking two 3-run homeruns which almost singlehandedly engineered a huge Hawk comeback.  Kansas fell into an early 6-2 hole due to a very off performance by freshman starter Lee Ridenhour.  In by far his worst outing of the year Ridenhour lasted only 9 batters before being lifted two outs into the first inning.  Thompson’s first home run cut the Oklahoma lead to one run at 6-5, his second homer in the top of the  5th put the Hawks up 9-7.  Unfortunately the KU scoring stopped dead at that point due to some fine relief work by the Oklahoma bullpen.   Brett Bollman deserves notice today as well.  He came in to relieve Ridenhour in the first inning and ended up sticking around until the 7th inning, retiring 18 of the 24 men he faced.

Kansas fell to 33-16 overall and 12-9 in the Big-12, good for a tie for 5th place.  Oklahoma improved to 34-14 and 12-9.  Kansas is back in action Wednesday when they play their final non-conference game of the year at Wichita State.  First pitch 7PM.  I have to figure Cameron Selik will get the start in that game.  Brett Bollman appeared in two games this weekend and threw 87 pitches.

Box score and KU recap link after the jump.

Link to KU recap

May 03, 2009 at Norman, OK (L Dale Mitchell Park)

Score by Innings                      R  H  E
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Kansas.............. 203 040 000 0 -  9  6  0
Oklahoma............ 600 100 200 1 - 10 13  1
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