In their 7-0 win over Kansas State on Sunday, the Missouri baseball team took control of the game immediately and, through strong pitching and situational hitting, kept it out of fully out of reach.
And the victory was doubly sweet, as it gave them their first Big 12 series sweep in two years.
“Just getting a sweep under our belts for the first time this season is huge,” junior right fielder Blake Brown said.
The sweep was the Tigers’ first in Big 12 play since they took three of three from Nebraska in 2010, a stat that came as a surprise to junior left fielder Dane Opel.
“It’s been a really long time, and it just feels good to put three consistent games together,” Opel said. “I feel like everyone on the team, one through nine, everyone on the mound, they all did their job.”
To cap off the series, Missouri put together what could perhaps be described as a complete team performance.
The Tigers took the lead early in the first inning. Junior center fielder Brannon Champagne singled, senior catcher Ben Turner walked and Brown stepped up to the plate with runners at second and third after junior shortstop Eric Garcia advanced them with a bouncer to first.
Brown worked the count full, then hit a sharp single to left and drove two runs home to kick off Missouri’s scoring for the day.
The Tigers added one run in the fifth, on Opel’s long home run down the right-field line, and four, all with two outs, in the eighth. The eighth was a wild inning, which featured Brown drag-bunting with two outs to score senior third baseman Conner Mach.
“Honestly, I hate bunting, but coach (Evan) Pratte was yelling at me, and he told me three innings before, ‘You’ve got to bunt,’” Brown said. “I heard him yelling, and looked at the third baseman and he’s basically in the outfield playing shallow left, so I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll bunt.’”
Missouri had a banner day on the mound as well. Freshman Brett Graves had a stellar outing on the mound, throwing a career-high 6.2 innings of shutout ball.
Graves has shown that he has a power arm — he hit 95 miles per hour with his fastball against Oklahoma — but only struck out two on Sunday. However, Graves said that was because of his approach.
“(I was) pitching to contact a lot of times, because I was behind (in the count), and I had to,” he said. “But when I go out there, I’m not trying to strike guys out. I’m not trying to throw the ball really hard because when you do that, the ball kind of spreads out on you. And I’ve fallen subject to that a lot this year.”
The No. 3 starter spot has been in flux since junior Eric Anderson’s injury, but coach Tim Jamieson thinks he has found his man in Graves.
“I thought he was great,” Jamieson said. “It was something we were looking for all year and now, going in to next weekend, for the first time in a while, I think I know what the rotation is.”
The Tigers head to Springfield on Wednesday for a matchup against Missouri State, one of the top teams in the Missouri Valley Conference, before continuing their Big 12 schedule against Texas Tech on Friday in Lubbock, Texas.
