ARLINGTON — Under ordinary circ*mstances, Roc Riggio having to come out of an Oklahoma State game would be good news for any Cowboys opponent. Not so on Saturday for Texas Tech.
Aidan Meola homered in the bottom of the ninth inning to give Oklahoma State a 6-5 victory against Texas Tech and send the Cowboys to the championship game of the Big 12 tournament. Oklahoma State, having beaten Tech 8-1 earlier Saturday, double-dipped the Red Raiders in one of the two bracket finals.
Meola's home run off Tech closer Brandon Beckel completed a comeback from a 5-0 deficit.
"Kind of gut-wrenching there, having a five-run lead in the eighth," Tech coach Tim Tadlock said.
Meola slammed a no-doubter to Globe Life Field's second deck in left field. Hudson White's three-run homer to the second deck in left-center had given Tech the 5-0 lead in the fifth inning.
The score stayed that way until the eighth when the Cowboys got a two-run homer from Sylvester, a run on a wild pitch and a two-run pinch single by Carson Benge that tied it.
Beau Sylvester and Meola both came up in the 2-hole and homered after Riggio left the game. He was already feeling ill, Oklahoma State coach Josh Holliday said, and then shaken up after diving for a ball. Sylvester and Meola both batted in the 2-hole after Riggio departed. Sylvester's home run was his second, Meola's his third. Riggio has 17, as well as 60 runs batted in.
No. 2 seed Oklahoma State (41-17) will face No. 4 seed TCU (36-22), which swept through the other bracket undefeated, for the tournament title at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Here are takeaways from the game:
If only
When OSU second baseman Roc Riggio left the game, he was 0 for 5 for the day with two walks and a sacrifice. Being one of the top hitters in the Big 12, though, there's no way he would've been pulled.
Sylvester and Meola made the most of their one plate appearance each.
"I'm glad Roc wasn't feeling well in the seventh inning. It led to two homers in the 2-hole, right?" Cowboys coach Josh Holliday said jokingly. "Long day, he just wasn't feeling good. ... It's why we've got a team, right?
"I've told people, we're going to play this tournament hard, but we're not going to leave everything we own on this field. There's more baseball to be played after this, so I just didn't feel like it was right to push him when he wasn't feeling right."
Not so fast
Texas Tech, up 5-0, was two innings away from playing for an elusive Big 12 tournament title before Oklahoma State's late comeback. Tech fans were feeling it, volleying Raider Power chants from the fifth inning until the game turned — and once it turned, it never turned back Tech's way.
The Red Raiders' only time to win the Big 12 tournament was in 1998 when a Larry Hays team beat Texas A&M in the finale at All Sports Stadium in Oklahoma City.
Not the clean game they needed
Tech had a chance to short-circuit what turned into a five-run eighth. After a leadoff single by Zach Ehrhard, a two-run homer from Beau Sylvester and a base hit by Colin Brueggemann, Ethan Coombes came in to pitch for Tech. He got just what he wanted: a ground ball to shortstop. But Tracer Lopez mishandled it for an error.
The misplay loomed large as the Cowboys paraded five more to the plate and pulled even.
Rough stretch for Beckel
If the Red Raiders are going to make a run in an NCAA regional, Brandon Beckel almost certainly will have to play a key role. He's been one of the team's few dependable arms this season with six saves, and in two of his past three appearances he's given up home runs in the ninth inning of tie games.
Asked what level of concern he might have about Beckel, Tadlock said, "Absolutely none. He's been one of our guys. We're going to keep going to him, keep trusting what he does and try to put him in situations where he can have success."
Kansas first baseman Cole Elvis hit a two-run drive to give Kansas a 3-1 win in the opener of the last regular-season series in Lubbock. Then Meola went deep against Beckel to send the Red Raiders home Saturday.
Before that, Beckel had allowed one homer all season, on March 11 against Iowa.
Spot starters shine
Tech's Kyle Robinson and Oklahoma State's Janzen Keisel, both tall sophom*ore righthanders, made their fourth starts apiece. Both registered a career-high eight strikeouts, and Robinson was a little better for a little longer, pitching five scoreless innings.
Keisel walked seven, including the first two batters of the fifth. After Keisel departed, both the walks scored and the Red Raiders turned it into a five-run inning.
Robinson left with a 5-0 lead. He pounded the zone with 56 of 78 pitches for strikes and held a good lineup to four hits.
Forty wins on hold
Texas Tech (39-21) will try to get to 40 victories this coming week in an NCAA regional. That would be the sixth 40-win season for Tim Tadlock in his 10 full seasons as head coach, not counting the Covid-shortened 2020 campaign.
Former Tech coach Larry Hays had 11 40-win seasons, his first with the Red Raiders coming in 1991 and his last coming in 2004.
