No. 1 seed Kansas to begin postseason vs. Baylor at Big 12 baseball tournament
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kansas enters Big 12 tournament as the No. 1 seed with a double bye.
- Kansas finished the regular season 39-16 and won the conference title by one game.
- Kansas recorded 24 comeback victories and finished 4-3 in one-run games.
Kansas Jayhawks shortstop Tyson LeBlanc helped his North Vermillion High School team win a Louisiana state baseball title in 2021 and his LSU Eunice squad claim an NJCAA crown in 2024.
He believes he knows the formula for success in the postseason.
“The toughest team always wins,” said LeBlanc, KU’s 6-foot, 200-pound first-team All-Big 12 selection from Maurice, Louisiana.
He was speaking Tuesday at a news conference held in advance of the Big 12’s postseason tournament.
“The guys who don’t give up when stuff is not falling their way,” LeBlanc said, “those teams are going to win. And we have all the makeup to do that this year.”
The No. 13-ranked Jayhawks, who as No. 1 seed in the single-elimination Big 12 tourney have received a double bye, will meet No. 8 seed Baylor in a quarterfinal contest at 2:30 p.m. Thursday in Surprise, Arizona.
If KU wins Thursday the Jayhawks would play either No. 4 seed UCF or No. 5 Oklahoma State at 6:30 p.m. Friday. The title game is 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
Baylor (29-26, 14-16 Big 12) defeated BYU 13-9 on Wednesday night to advance to the quarterfinals. The Jayhawks and Bears have not met yet this season.
The Jayhawks (39-16, 22-8 Big 12) wrapped up the program’s first regular-season conference title since 1949 last weekend. West Virginia finished a game back in the standings at 37-13, 21-9 in league.
“Our team loves playing in close games. It’s kind of been a trend this year,” said LeBlanc, who leads the team in batting average (.323), home runs (19) and RBIs (53). “We never give up, no matter how close it is, no matter how many runs we’re down in the eighth or ninth inning. We’re always going to persevere.”
KU has had 24 comeback victories this season. The Jayhawks are 4-3 in one-run games and 9-0 in two-run games.
“I think those games are great going into the postseason because not all the postseason games are going to go how we want them to go from start to finish,” LeBlanc said. “We’re going to have to persevere through some humps, and that’s what we did last weekend to grind out two wins in the first two games (of KU’s league-clinching series at BYU, where the Jayhawks won two of three).”
LeBlanc said the Jayhawks are well prepared for not only the Big 12 tournament, but also the NCAAs.
“We’re now getting into postseason baseball, but every game we approach the same way,” he said. “We warm up the same way. We take our BP (batting practice) the same way. We’re not going to make it any bigger than what it is. We’ll just approach it the same exact way as we played our first game.”
Fourth-year KU coach Dan Fitzgerald said it’s been business as usual this week in preparation for the conference tourney.
“I think to win the regular season title was step No. 1,” said Fitzgerald, who earlier this week was voted Big 12 coach of the year by the fellow coaches for the second straight season.
“You’ve got multiple opportunities for championships throughout the year, one being the regular season, two being the conference tournament, and then they grow from there. It’s a great challenge of having to win three games against a really tough field in kind of an interesting format (single elimination) in that we don’t know who we’re going to play until tomorrow night (Wednesday). It’s multiple scouting reports and we’re working on some teams we’ve seen and some we haven’t. So we’re working on those right now. We’ll be closely watching the games.”
Kansas, by the way, has qualified for the Big 12 tourney in four consecutive seasons for the first time. The Jayhawks, 16-27 all-time in the event, advanced to the semifinals in 2024 and 2025. That was the first time the Jayhawks advanced in back-to-back years since 2012-13.
KU is the only Power Four team in the country with at least 39 overall wins, 20 conference wins and 20 road victories.
The Jayhawks won a stretch of 20 of 22 conference games from March 15-May 3. Kansas has four hitters with at least 10 home runs, in LeBlanc (19), Josh Dykhoff (14), Augusto Mungarrieta (13) and Tyson Owens (12). KU had four players with double-digit homers last year, too.
Until this year, KU had never had four double-digit home run hitters in back-to-back seasons. The Jayhawks have hit 77 home runs in their last 39 games after hitting just 16 in their first 16 games.. KU has a 24-4 record this season when hitting at least two in a game.
“To be the 1-seed and to go in with another chance to compete for a championship, whatever that looks like is awesome.,” Fitzgerald said. “I think the Big 12 is so good, and there’s no floor to our league. Top to bottom it is really outstanding.”
