Kansas beat Arkansas 5-3 on Saturday night at Hoglund Ballpark in Lawrence, erasing a 3-1 deficit with four unanswered runs and staying unbeaten in the regional. The Jayhawks are now one win away from the first super regional appearance in program history.
That is why this game mattered as soon as it ended. Kansas had the result it needed to keep control of the bracket, while Arkansas, the second seed, was pushed into the losers’ side after a night that began with Hunter Dietz doing nearly everything right.
Dietz struck out a career-high 14 batters in 6 1/3 innings, a dominant start that should have been enough more often than not. He gave up a two-run home run to Tyson LeBlanc in the fifth, though, and Arkansas’s bullpen could not hold the lead after Reese Robinett’s two-run shot had restored a 3-1 advantage on what was just Arkansas’s second hit of the game. From there, the game turned on the kind of small opening postseason baseball rarely forgives.
Kansas answered with the kind of steadiness that keeps a regional run alive. Mason Cook allowed two earned runs in 4 2/3 innings for the Jayhawks, and Riane Ritter and Boede Rahe combined to throw 4 1/3 hitless innings behind him. Coach Dan Fitzgerald praised his team’s composure afterward, saying it competed at a super high level, stayed poised, prepared and loved the moment. LeBlanc, for his part, said he was sticking with his teammates after watching Dietz dominate from the other dugout.
For Arkansas, the sharp edge of the loss was not the start from Dietz but what came after it. The bullpen allowed a bases-loaded walk by Tyson Owens and a solo home run by Augusto Mungarrieta, and the late slips were enough to turn a strong pitching performance into a season-threatening defeat. Cook said the ball that got past the Kansas center fielder became a massive momentum shift, and the Jayhawks rode that swing the rest of the way.
Kansas was scheduled to play again at 5 p.m. Sunday against either Arkansas or Northeastern, with a win sending the Jayhawks to the regional final and a loss forcing a rematch on Monday. If Kansas keeps this run going, the next stop would be the winner of Georgia Tech’s Atlanta Regional, with history now sitting just one more victory away.
