With just two weekends and six games to play in the Big 12 regular season baseball race, the Kansas Jayhawks are up 4 games in the standings on two teams tied for second place, West Virginia and Arizona State.
Surely then that makes this weekend’s Hoglund Ballpark showdown with the Mountaineers the biggest series in KU coach Dan Fitzgerald’s four years in charge of the program so far, right?
“Last weekend was the biggest one we've ever had; the weekend before was. I mean it,” Fitzgerald said outside the KU dugout on Wednesday morning. “My brain just doesn’t work in the globals. To me, you have a 30-game (Big 12) regular season and weekend 2 is just as important as weekend 9 and you’ve gotta stack days.”
The Jayhawks certainly have done their share of that this season.
After dropping their opening Big 12 series of the season at Texas Tech back in mid-March, the Jayhawks have won the next seven three-game sets, including four by sweep. Another sweep this weekend would clinch the regular season title, and even taking 2 of 3 from the Mountaineers would give KU a chance of winning its first ever Big 12 regular season title depending on what happens elsewhere in league play.
Kansas, which moved to No. 7 and No. 9 in the major national polls this week, has won 27 of its last 31 games and is in position to both win the Big 12 regular season title and host an NCAA Tournament regional for the first time in program history.
They still have to finish to make sure that either of those things happen, but Fitzgerald — and, perhaps more importantly, his roster — believes that they’ll do just that.
The reason is simple. Kansas baseball knows no other way. It’s not about revving it back up after falling off and riding the peaks and valleys of the season. This group, at the urging of its coaches, stays present and sits in each moment of each day as well as any team that has come through the program.
Whether it’s a strikeout that ends one at-bat or a homer that ends the next, the reaction is the same — on to the next play, the next pitch and the next at-bat.
Up and down the roster, the Jayhawks have become masters of this, which is why they were able to shake off Tuesday night’s 9-8, 13-inning loss at Creighton and be back on the field Wednesday, preparing for West Virginia.
“It was a big game,” second baseman Cade Baldridge said of Tuesday’s battle in Omaha, Nebraska, at Charles Schwab Field, the annual site of the College World Series. “All of them are big, obviously. It didn't go our way, but at the end of the day, we're trying to win (the) Big 12, so we'll just learn from those mistakes and build on the good things from the game and go into today's practice and try to figure out what we can do to be our best on Friday.”
Baldridge, Fitzgerald and KU ace Dom Voegele, who did not pitch on Tuesday night, said the experience of seeing Charles Schwab Field up close and personal added a layer of motivation to the season.
They now know what it looks like, what it feels like, where the lights are, how the surface plays and how the dugout smells.
“To play a game there is a really big deal,” Fitzgerald said. “That wasn't remotely close to our mind when scheduling it. It was just a great opportunity against a really good midweek matchup that keeps us sharp for the Big 12. But I do think there are spin-off positives that come from it. So, yes, I think they were taking it in. And I think, as a college baseball person, you have to.”
But even with that fresh in their minds — and representing the ultimate goal for how to put an exclamation point on the 2026 season — the focus remains the same.
“Everybody wants to play in the College World Series,” Baldridge said. “I mean, that's every baseball player's dream. But we have to do our best to focus, take it day by day, and just do whatever we can to win the next game.”
While each moment is treated the same, Fitzgerald admitted that there are moments that are inherently bigger. The bump from the middle of the season to the end. Another bump when you get to the Big 12 tournament. Two more at regionals and super-regionals. And the last in Omaha.
He calls this phenomenon on The Final 10% and jokes that if you went to his house you’d see a bunch of home-improvement projects that are about 90% complete.
“The final 10% is the hardest part,” Fitzgerald said Wednesday. “So, I think we're in that final 10% phase of really fine-tuning some things (for the stretch run).”
What things?
It’s bigger than swing mechanics, the scouting report and what the metrics say.
Body language is one part of The Final 10%. Not allowing negative emotion to surface is another.
“And I think there's a fine line there,” Fitzgerald said. “Because I think you have to play with emotion, and you have to let that fire come out, but it can teeter, at times, into negativity if you don't watch it.”
These Jayhawks (37-12 overall, 20-4 in Big 12 play) have been phenomenal at that all season long. But now, as the pressure ramps up and the stakes get bigger, Fitzgerald and company are looking for the kind of response from this team that they believe is in them.
“They’ve stuck together,” Fitzgerald said. “This is an incredibly selfless team, and they really care about each other and they put each other ahead of their own needs as well as any team that I've ever been around.”
Game 1 against West Virginia is slated for a 6 p.m. first pitch on Friday night at Hoglund Ballpark. Game 2 is set for 2 p.m. Saturday and the finale will get going at 11 a.m. Sunday.
— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com
