Texas Tech baseball beats OU for 6th-straight Big 12 win

Friday night, the Texas Tech baseball team rallied for a 10-6 win over Oklahoma in Norman pushing its winning streak in Big 12 games to six.

Just over two months ago, the Texas Tech basketball team began a streak of 9-straight wins to end the regular season and claim a share of the Big 12 title before a historic run in the NCAA Tournament. Apparently, Tim Tadlock’s baseball team was paying close attention because it too is heating up as the regular season draws to a close.

Friday night, the Red Raiders used seven unanswered runs in the final four innings to rally past Oklahoma 10-6 in the first of a three-game road series. The win moved the Red Raiders to 12-7 in league play and pulled them to within one game of first place Baylor, which had its game with Kansas State Friday suspend by inclement weather in the sixth inning with the score tied at 3-3. The Bears and Wildcats will resume the game Saturday and everyone wearing scarlet and black will be pulling for KSU.

But had the Red Raiders not been able to overtake Oklahoma, their Big 12 title hopes could have taken a huge hit regardless of what happens in Waco this weekend. Thankfully, the Big 12 RBI leader came to the rescue in his hometown.

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First baseman Cam Warren went 4-4 at the plate with two homers and four RBI including a 3-run bomb in the top of the 7th to give Tech a 7-6 lead. The Red Raiders would add three insurance runs in the top of the 9th, which was a great bonus for Tyler Floyd, who recorded a three-inning save by striking out six and allowing no Sooner to reach base.

The home team opened the scoring with two runs in the bottom of the 1st off of Texas Tech starter Micah Dallas who allowed four runs in 3.2 innings of work. The freshman struggled with his command walking five hitters and throwing two wild pitches as only 37 of his 70 total pitches went for strikes.

But Jon McMillon, Hunter Dobbins and Floyd combined to limit the OU lineup to just two runs (both charged to McMillion) over the final 5.1 frames. Dobbins was credited with the win after tossing a scoreless sixth allowing only one base hit while fanning two.

At the plate, a Texas Tech lineup that has struggled on the road at times this season came to life after picking up just one run in the first three innings. In the 4th it was small-ball that worked in Tech’s favor when third baseman Parker Kelly was credited with an RBI on a sacrifice bunt and Warren scored on an OU error to put Tech up 3-2.

In the 6th, Warren led off the inning with a solo homer to cut the Oklahoma lead to 6-4 after the Sooners had scored two runs in both the 4th and 5th innings. The senior’s big night pushed his Big 12 leading RBI total to 60 and his team-leading home run total to 13.

As a team, Tech pounded out 13 hits with five going for extra bases. In addition to Warren, Josh Jung (3-4) and Cody Masters (2-4) also had multiple hits as the Red Raiders plated double-digit runs for the fourth time in their last six games.

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The teams return to the diamond Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. with Tech sending it’s No. 1 starter Caleb Killian (7-2, 4.22 ERA) to the mound against OU lefty Levi Prater (6-4, 2.54 ERA) in what should be a tough pitching matchup. Hopefully, Tim Tadlock’s team can continue to do what Chris Beard’s basketball team did and ride a huge Big 12 winning streak to a conference title and perhaps much more.

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