Why the KU baseball team never lost faith after winless series vs. West Virginia
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- KU lost all three games to West Virginia 4-1, 5-2 and 13-2 at Hoglund Ballpark.
- Since WVU, KU went 8-1 and had a six-game winning streak before the Super Regional.
- If KU wins two of three versus Oklahoma, the Jayhawks advance to the College World Series.
The Kansas Jayhawks baseball team had hoped to celebrate the school’s first regular-season conference title since 1949 on its own field.
The celebration would surely spill into the KU clubhouse if the host Jayhawks could simply beat Big 12 runner-up West Virginia in two of three games at Hoglund Ballpark.
Instead, the Mountaineers swept the Jayhawks 4-1, 5-2 and 13-2 in that May 8-10 series, forcing Kansas — a team that had won seven straight series — to beat BYU two of three times the following weekend.
KU did so, claiming the program’s first league title in 77 seasons on the Cougars’ field, 1,090 miles from Lawrence.
The Jayhawks were even awarded the regular-season championship trophy by Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark after game two of the three-game set.
And since that 0-3 letdown against West Virginia in Lawrence, KU has won two out of three at BYU, defeated Baylor, Oklahoma State and West Virginia at the league’s postseason tournament in Surprise, Arizona, and taken three games at the Lawrence Regional of the NCAA Tournament.
That’s an 8-1 record since WVU and six-game winning streak heading into Saturday’s NCAA Super Regional opener against Oklahoma (5 p.m. at Hoglund Ballpark).
KU first baseman Josh Dykhoff had the simple response of, “No,” when asked by a reporter after the WVU series if something suddenly was wrong with the team.
“This is no surprise. We’re all just best friends in there (locker room),” Dykhoff, a senior from Bluffton, Minnesota, said after the Jayhawks’ 13-10 regional-clinching victory over Arkansas on Sunday at Hoglund Ballpark.
Dykhoff takes a .295 batting average with 16 homers and 56 RBIs into Saturday’s game against the Sooners.
“Showing up every day is the best thing,” he said. “We show up with smiles and we want to be here every single day, work our butts off and be together.”
Fourth-year KU head coach Dan Fitzgerald, who has led KU to a school-record tying 45 victories against 16 losses this season, did not overreact to his squad’s 0-3 showing against the Mountaineers.
Actually, he did not react at all. He ran practices as usual in preparation for the next series, at BYU, fully confident his team would avoid a late-season losing streak.
“These guys are so connected and so tight. There are a bunch of parts in the game where I think, ‘Man, should I be saying something (to the team in dugout)?’ I’m like, ‘No. They’ve got it. They’re saying plenty.’
“The guys just never quit. They believe. They love each other. These guys know how to grind and it’s an honor to be their coach.”
If KU can win two of three against the Sooners (36-22), the Jayhawks would advance to the second College World Series in school history. The one previous appearance was in 1993.
It would cap an amazing two-year stretch for the Jayhawks. After a 25-32 season in 2023 and 31-23 campaign in 2024, the Jayhawks went 43-17 in 2025 to go with this season’s 45-16 mark.
KU went 22-8 in regular-season league play this season after compiling a 20-10 record in league competition in 2025.
KU finished second in the Big 12 last year and went 0-2 at the Arkansas Regional of the NCAA tourney. This season the Jayhawks beat Arkansas twice and Northeastern once in regional action at Hoglund.
Asked if all these accomplishments the past two seasons have put pressure on the team, Fitzgerald said: “These guys are as loose as can be. There hasn’t been one moment this year where I’ve thought, ‘Man, these guys are tight,’ or ‘They’re really feeling it.’
“Usually, teams that you worry about that, it’s because they’ve shown it at different parts of the year,” he continued. “I mean, you think about how many ‘quote unquote’ must-win games we’ve had. It feels like we’ve had 56 of them because the RPI is so fragile that you play these games early in the year and they’re critical. You literally build the schedule to try to have your RPI as high as possible so you can host.
“A home game against Sac State is about as RPI-huge as a road game against anyone, so those games all feel like playoff games, so I haven’t sensed it at all. I highly doubt I will today at practice. I saw a bunch of the guys yesterday in passing. It would be the first time that has popped up. I don’t anticipate it,” he added of players potentially becoming nervous with the school’s second appearance in the CWS a real possibility.
Fitzgerald was asked about the significance of being the first KU baseball team to advance to an NCAA Super Regional.
“I’m the one that probably needs some time in August to really comprehend it,” he said. “Taking this job, there was a shared vision and certainly Travis (Goff, AD) and Sean (Lester, deputy athletic director for administration) and everyone here … the thing that I remember so clearly in my interview is how prepared and how clearly KU had a plan for what was this unknown future of NIL and all these new things. I just knew that, ‘Hey, I don’t know that anyone knows what the roadmap is, but these people really have one that they’re following.’
“And so as we’ve gotten into this, if someone had said, ‘Write down all the things you want to accomplish,’ this certainly would have been something you’d write — regional championship at home, new left field fence (to increase stadium capacity in ‘The Backyard’) definitely would have been on the list. But the significance of it … for me, the special part is seeing guys from my first year (celebrate win over Arkansas on Sunday).
“Because those guys … you are seeing guys that are reconnecting to the program. So many former players are here (for NCAAs) and having the time of their lives watching the guys do what they used to do.
“I think it’s probably bigger than my brain can really think of right now, because I’m just thinking about what we need to do tomorrow, but yes, it’s a it’s a pretty special moment,” Fitzgerald stated.
