Kansas State and the University of Missouri have both earned spots in next weeks' Big XII baseball championship tournament held at the Oklahoma City RedHawks field in Oklahoma City. Kansas State got the series win against Kansas to knock the Jayhawks out of the race and earn the last spot in next weeks championship tournament. The game Sunday night in Lawrence between Kansas and Kansas State will determine the final seeding for the qualifying teams.
The tournament runs Wednesday, May 25th through Sunday, May 29th. The teams that will be chasing the conference championship this year are co-regular season champions Texas and Texas A&M, and joining them are Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Texas Tech, Missouri and Kansas State.
Texas A&M won the 2010 conference championship by defeating Baylor 5-3 in 10 innings. The conference tournament this season will feature some of the best baseball teams in the country as Texas (5), Oklahoma (8) and Texas A&M (11) are all currently ranked in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches poll. Texas A&M leads the conference in both batting average and team ERA in conference-only games as we head into this championship tournament.
Over the past few seasons we've seen players such as the Kansas City Royals' outfielder Alex Gordon (Nebraska), New York Yankees' reliever Joba Chamberlain (Nebraska), Colorado Rockies' closer Huston Street (Texas), Detriot Tigers' starter Max Scherzer (Missouri), and the Minnesota Twins' starter Brian Duensing (Nebraska) come from playing in this tournament to playing in the big leagues just a few seasons later.