No. 4 Tech Welcomes In Oklahoma State

LUBBOCK, Texas – The No. 4 Texas Tech baseball team returns to the friendly confines of Rip Griffin Park for a weekend conference set against Oklahoma State on April 21-23.

Friday night's game is set for 6:30, while the final two games of the series are slated for 2 p.m. starts on Saturday & Sunday. All three games will be televised on FOX Sports Southwest Plus as well as on the radio on the Texas Tech Sports Network on 97.3 FM & the TuneIn app. Live stats will also be available via TexasTech.Statbroadcast.com.

It is the second home conference series for the Red Raiders (32-8, 8-4), who played three of their four previous Big 12 sets in Austin (March 17-19), Norman, Oklahoma (March 31-April 2) and Manhattan, Kansas (April 13-15). For the Cowboys (21-15, 4-8), it will be the third road Big 12 set after opening the season in Fort Worth on March 24-26 and went to Lawrence, Kansas, last weekend.

Friday will mark the 70^th meeting all-time between Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, who holds a slight advantage in the series at 38-31. The last 10 games between the two have been split down the middle, as the Red Raiders picked up a three-game sweep of the Cowboys in Stillwater last season. Tech picked up a 5-1 win in game one, followed by 8-2 & 15-5 routs in the final two contests. When the two last met in Lubbock, the Red Raiders opened the series with a 5-3 win, but dropped the final two games to give Oklahoma state the series win.

The Cowboys ride into Lubbock after a thrilling 7-6 extra-innings victory over Oral Roberts on Tuesday night in Stillwater. In conference play, OSU posted a series win over K-State on April 7-9, but fell at then-No. 3 TCU, at home against West Virginia and on the road at Kansas to bring in a 4-8 Big 12 mark.

Okstate will turn the ball over to right-handers Joe Lienhard and Tyler Buffett for the first two games of the weekend. Lienhard is 2-0 this season with a 3.48 ERA, striking out 31 batters in 31.0 innings. Buffett, a 2016 All-American, is 5-2 with a 4.12 ERA, ringing up 50 and walking 12 over 54.2 innings of work. Sunday's starter has not been determined.

At the plate, the Cowboys are hitting .273 as a team, with Garrett McCain and Colin Simpson leading the charge with above .300 figures. McCain is the Big 12 leader in batting average with a .368 clip, with Simpson trailing at .315. McCain also holds the squad's top spots in hits with 50 and runs scoring 37 this season. Garrett Benge, who's flirting with the .300 mark at .299 leads the Cowboys with 39 runs driven in.

On the other side of the field, the Red Raiders remained above the .300 line as a unit after Tuesday night's win, moving to .301, with six starters sitting above the team average. The six include: Grant Little (.339), Hunter Hargrove (.337), Ryan Long (.324), Michael Berglund (.320) and Josh Jung (.300), as well as Cody Farhat, who has moved into the starting role while hitting .364. Hargrove continues to lead the Big 12 in hits with 55, while Orlando Garcia has driven in the most runs with 41 & Jung has crossed plate a team-high 39 times.

The Red Raiders will call upon a trio of sophomores to start this weekend's slate. Lefties Erikson Lanning & Steven Gingery will start Friday & Saturday's contests, respectively, with right-hander Ryan Shetter getting the nod in Sunday's finale. Lanning is 2-0 this season with a 2.81 ERA, tossing 11 strikeouts and 11 walks over 25.2 innings in 13 appearances and three starts. Gingery is up to a Big 12-leading 7-0 with a 1.48 ERA, ringing up 67 batters. Shetter has also put together a 2.0 record this season, striking out 41 over 42.0 innings pitched.

On Tuesday night in Midland, the Red Raiders completed the season series sweep of New Mexico State with a 6-4 victory in Security Bank Ballpark. Tech used a four-run fifth to help re-take the lead on the Aggies and close out the three-game set. In the previous two meetings, the Red Raiders won a 16-1 contest in Lubbock, followed by a 15-4 victory in Las Cruces.

The four-run fifth was the 22^nd time this season Tech has scored four or more runs in a single inning, improving to 16-1 when doing so.

Earlier in the week, Tech added its second-straight Big 12 Player of the Week winner in Michael Davis. The Lubbock native hit .450 last week, racking up nine hits with three-straight games with a home run. He also had seven RBI and six runs scored, while helping turn a season-high four double plays in the series finale at K-State. It was the second career honor for Davis.

The win on Saturday in Manhattan capped a 3-1 week for the Red Raiders, who won their third conference series of the year after taking a midweek game against New Mexico. The weekend matchup was their third Big 12 series on the road this year, giving the Red Raiders just one more away series and three inside the confines of Dan Law Field at Rip Griffin Park.

With last week's results, the Red Raiders moved up in four of the six polls, climbing as high as No. 4 by Baseball America. D1 Baseball, the USA Today Coaches Poll and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) all placed Tech at No. 5, while Collegiate Baseball and Perfect Game kept the Red Raiders at sixth in the latest rankings.

After the weekend set, the Red Raiders will head to Albuquerque for a pair of midweek games against New Mexico on April 25-26 at Santa Ana Star Field.

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Players Mentioned

Michael Berglund

Michael Davis

Cody Farhat

Orlando Garcia

Steven Gingery

Hunter Hargrove

Josh Jung

Erikson Lanning

Grant Little

Ryan Long

Ryan Shetter