AUSTIN, Texas – No. 2 Texas Baseball blasted West Virginia, 12-2, in the regular season finale to claim a share of the Big 12 Conference Championship on Saturday at UFCU Disch-Falk Field. The Longhorns (40-13, 17-7) will be the No. 1 seed in next week’s Big 12 Conference Tournament in Oklahoma City.
Pete Hansen pitched six innings and allowed just one run on two hits. He struck out six batters and picked up his seventh win of the season.
Eric Kennedy went 3-for-4 with a homer, a triple and four runs batted in to lead the Longhorns offensively.
West Virginia took an early 1-0 lead after starting the game with back-to-back singles and a sacrifice fly. Hansen limited the damage by getting a strikeout to end the inning. Hansen then scattered four baserunners over the next five innings.
Texas grabbed the lead with three runs on two hits and four walks in the second inning. Douglas Hodo III walked, Trey Faltine singled and Silas Ardoin walked to load the bases with nobody out. A wild pitch allowed Hodo to score before Eric Kennedy walked to reload the bases.
After a pitching change, Mike Antico walked to drive in the second run and Mitch Daly hit a single to right field to make the score 3-1.
The Longhorns put four more runs on the board in the third inning to extend the lead to 7-1. The big blow in the inning was provided by a three-run homer by Eric Kennedy and Antico scored the other run on a wild pitch.
Texas tacked on two more runs in the fourth inning after Ardoin and Kennedy hit back-to-back triples. Kennedy scored on a wild pitch to make the score 9-1.
The Longhorns made it a fourth-consecutive run-scoring inning in the fifth with an RBI groundout by Faltine to go up 10-1.
Zach Zubia hit a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth inning to complete the run-rule win.