KU baseball's Dan Fitzgerald shares team message after recent losses
KU baseball struggled this past week, and is on a four-game losing streak. Can the Jayhawks bounce back in the days ahead in Big 12 Conference play?
LAWRENCE — There was nothing Dan Fitzgerald could do other than react to the reality of being swept at home by West Virginia. Fitzgerald, Kansas baseball’s head coach, praised how well the Mountaineers played in this three-game, Big 12 Conference series in Lawrence. In every aspect, he explained, from offense to defense to pitching to base running, WVU outplayed KU that weekend.
It pushed the Jayhawks into a four-game losing streak, and Monday would see them drop from No. 9 in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll to No. 17.
As much as there was a pivot to talking about how KU (37-15, 20-7 in Big 12) would still be going into its final conference series doing well overall in conference play, the tough weekend loomed large. As much as Kansas is still in first place over West Virginia by a game in the Big 12 standings, ahead of a three-game road series at BYU that runs Thursday through Saturday, the margin for error has tightened. And the message Fitzgerald delivered to his team after the WVU series addressed that.
RELATED: Kansas baseball drops out of top 10 in USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll “Didn’t play great, and that sometimes winning can disguise and camouflage things that need to be addressed,” Fitzgerald explained. “And so, we’ve been addressing things throughout our multiple long win streaks, and I think sometimes it takes weekends like this, unfortunately. My dad used to talk about learning the hard way, and you don’t always have to learn the hard way, and I think, unfortunately, sometimes you do.