When the 2025 college baseball season began, KU sophomore Cooper Moore had high hopes but just one thing on his mind.
“I’m just gonna pitch whenever the coaches call my name,” the Bixby, Oklahoma native said back in February. “I’m ready to take the ball whenever. I want to start, but I also want to put the team in a good situation and have a good guy in the pen, ready to go for the 7th, 8th and 9th.”
Fast-forward a few months and a quick look at the Jayhawks’ stats will show you that Moore was, in fact, ready.
After starting the season in the bullpen and moving into a starting role on Sundays, he quickly was bumped up to No. 2 in the rotation, which led to him needing to prepare to pitch every Saturday and, later in the season, on a couple of Fridays, too.
All he did with that progression is pitch at least 7 innings in 7 of his final 10 starts, holding down a key spot in the Jayhawks’ rotation that led to KU finishing the season at 42-14 overall and 20-10 in Big 12 play.
Earlier this month, Moore earned Big 12 Pitcher of the Week honors after pitching 8 dominant innings, with 10 strikeouts, in a win over BYU. Rather than recording a podcast and heading home to Oklahoma for a parade, Moore followed that up with an equally impressive outing at West Virginia last weekend, when he went 8 innings with 8 strikeouts in an 8-5 win over WVU.
"We come out and play ball every day, we work hard and we believe in ourselves a lot."
- Kansas starting pitcher Cooper Moore
KU coach Dan Fitzgerald, who is not one to easily toss around praise and superlatives, said on Monday that Moore’s evolution and progression throughout the season was one of the big keys to stabilizing the Jayhawks’ pitching staff.
Now, with the regular season in the rearview mirror and KU seeded 2nd at this week’s Big 12 tournament in Arlington, Texas, Moore enters the postseason on the heels of a masterful season, with a 7-1 record in 12 starts, 73 strikeouts and 16 walks in 77.2 innings pitched and a 3.48 ERA.
One of the best things about the way Fitzgerald elected to construct his roster while rebuilding the Jayhawks into a Big 12 contender is that it’s made up of a bunch of guys who don’t expect to be given a damn thing.
Juco transfers and players from lower-level programs are largely responsible for what the Jayhawks have done this season, but there are a handful of success stories who came to KU as freshmen and found their way into the mix, too.
Particularly on the mound.
KU’s top two starters, in Moore and sophomore ace Dom Voegele, were among the best in the conference this season and gave the Jayhawks a pair reliable arms to start any series against anybody.
You probably already knew about Voegele when the season began. He had a monster season in 2024 as a true freshman and followed up his Big 12 Freshman of the Year campaign by being named the Big 12 Preseason Pitcher of the Year in 2025.
Voegele has been rock solid for the Jayhawks all season, with 7 wins in 14 starts to go along with 80 strikeouts in 87 innings pitched in that high-pressure Friday-night-starter role.
Even on nights when those on the outside have suggested that Voegele was off, Fitzgerald laughed off that evaluation and talked about all the things Voegele did well. Not to blow smoke. Instead, because he gets it. And his players know he does.
While Voegele delivered exactly as the Jayhawks had hoped he would, Moore’s emergence was a big part of the reason the Jayhawks won a Big 12-best 20 games in conference play this season.
Moore and Voegele might’ve come to KU as prospects out of high school. But their personalities fit the rest of the roster with exact precision.
It’s not about them but the team. It’s not about flash but getting the job done. It’s not about searching for individual glory but doing whatever you can to bring praise and success to the team.
Take Moore’s comments and outlook from the start of the season as a clear-cut example of where his head was long before the Jayhawks came anywhere close to being one of the best stories in college baseball.
“We come out and play ball every day, we work hard and we believe in ourselves a lot,” Moore said back in February. “We’ve got a lot of new guys, but they all come from places where they played a lot and they believed they were the best player where they were. So, when they came here we put it all together and everyone works together.”
That’s not just second baseman, shortstop and first baseman executing their jobs on a 4-6-3 double play or a pitcher and catcher being in lockstep.
It’s more about mindset.
And if there’s one thing that this Kansas baseball team has done as well as any team in the country, it’s in their approach to the game as a whole.
Not just on game day or during pregame. But every day. All day. And in a way that made everyone believe in the same things and operate in the same way.
Win or lose.
One of the toughest things about this Kansas team was its resolve. Twice this season, the Jayhawks took a beating in a Big 12 series — swept at TCU in mid-April and swept by Cincinnati at home in early May — and both times they responded like champions.
Speaking of champions, it sure seems like the Jayhawks have a claim to the title of Big 12 champs this season.
Not only did they win more conference games than any Big 12 team, they also swept the team that gets to print the Big 12 champs T-Shirts. At their place.
However, because of a scheduling issue that kept them from playing all 30 Big 12 games, West Virginia’s 19-9 Big 12 record is technically enough to push the Mountaineers past KU’s 20-10 mark at the top.
Won’t matter.
The shirts and title would’ve been nice. And these guys would’ve accepted them with open arms. But, truth be told, not long after getting them, they probably would’ve just tossed them into the backs of their lockers and gone looking for more.
Four more wins and this becomes the winningest team in the history of Kansas baseball. They’ll definitely have a shot to get there, with however many games they play this week in Texas and a bid to regionals already locked up.
Heck, in a very real way, this team could be playing at the Big 12 tourney for the right to host a regional in the opening rounds of the NCAA tournament.
Not bad for a club that was picked to finish 9th in the Big 12 preseason poll, with a bunch of guys that nobody knew much about.
Fitzgerald knew, though. His coaching staff knew, too. And this group of players, collectively, knew that they had enough to have a special season.
As Moore said back in February, at that point, it became about figuring out how the pieces fit.
Two key components played the biggest role.
“Humility and confidence,” Moore said. “If you’re a baseball player, you have to have confidence. And we take big pride in that.”
The other?
“That’s something we push for,” Moore said of humility. “Fitz preaches that a lot. You’ve gotta put your team before yourself. It’s not thinking more of yourself, it’s thinking less of yourself and more about others.”
All of it, which Fitzgerald called a season “three years in the making,” led the Jayhawks to this point, and now that the postseason has arrived, they’re not about to start changing things now.
“You talk about certain things related to postseason,” Fitzgerald explained. “At practice (on Monday), I talked about we put ourselves in such a great spot that we could spend a bunch of time talking about if this happens and that happens, maybe we can host or we can do this and we can do that. Or, I said, we can just stick to what we’ve done the entire year and focus on the day in front of us. That’s probably the right path for our program.”
“I don’t think anything changes with this group in particular. They’re old, there’s some maturity, they love each other, they’re really funny, their energy is awesome. So, I think it’s more of a make sure we’ve got things buttoned up and organized so they know where they need to be, when they need to be there, and then, right before the game, make sure they’re in the gates the right way and then when those gates pop open, just let ‘em run. They love playing baseball and they are having so much fun.”
After securing a first-round bye with the top-4 seed, the Jayhawks will open Big 12 tourney play on Thursday against the winner of the Baylor-Oklahoma State matchup on Wednesday.
This year's tournament will be of the single-elimination variety as opposed to the double-elimination format used in years past.
KU's opening game is slated for 4 p.m. Thursday on ESPNU and ESPN+, and the winner of that one will advance to Friday's semifinal game slated for 7:30 p.m. on ESPN+.
The Big 12 title game will be played at 6 p.m. Saturday on ESPNU and ESPN+.
All games will be played at Globe Life Field, home of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers.
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
