This could be a weekend of redemption for Oklahoma baseball in 2016, with last-place Kansas State coming to town.
But then again, one weekend can hardly be expected to turn around a full season fraught with disappointment.
Both teams come into the three-game series at L. Dale Mitchell Park with .500 records on the season – OU at 22-22-1 and K-State at 23-23 – thanks to mid-week wins over in-state rivals Oral Roberts and Wichita State.
Even though the Wildcats sit at the bottom of the Big 12 standings, only one game separates the them from the Sooners in the standings. And if you look at the team stats in conference games only, Kansas State’s hitting and pitching as a team is better than Oklahoma.
So nothing will be easy about the home series finale this weekend against the visiting Wildcats.
Kansas State is hitting .290 as a team in league play, with six players hitting over .300. By contrast, Oklahoma is hitting 27 points lower as a team, at .263, and has just two players on the entire roster hitting above .300.
Oklahoma has won three of the last five games between the two teams, taking two of three last season on the road in Manhattan, but the Sooners have dominated the all-time series with a 153-58 record. That advantage is even greater in games played in Norman, where OU owns a 71-16 advantage over Kansas State.
Oklahoma freshman pitchers have accounted for 14 of the Sooners 22 wins this season, and head coach Pete Hughes has two of his young freshman scheduled to start the first two games of the Kansas State series. Right-hander Chris Andritsos (4-4, 3.27 ERA) will go on Friday night, and fellow freshman, Jake Irvin (3-1, 5.19), another right-hander will get the ball for the Sooners in the middle game of the series on Saturday.
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Junior shortstop Sheldon Neuse leads the Sooners in the hitting department, batting .377 for the season with a team-high nine home runs and 39 runs driven in.
OU is hoping to keep its offensive momentum going in the K-State series after scoring a combined 29 runs in its last two games, wins over Kansas (17-6) and Oral Roberts (12-3).
If the Sooners are going to keep winning, however, their pitchers are going to have to do a much better job keeping runs off the board. OU hurlers have given up 113 runs in Big 12 play, an average of more than six a game. Kansas State pitchers have yielded 24 fewer runs against conference opponents than the Sooners.
The Sooners cannot afford to lose this series if they want to be one of the eight conference teams that advance to the Big 12 postseason championship tournament. A three-game sweep would put them one game under .500 in the conference with two league games remaining, both against Oklahoma State.