It’s been a nagging problem all season. During the five-game winning streak it wasn’t brought up too much.

But now it’s at the forefront: the Jayhawks’ strikeouts.

Texas A&M struck out Kansas 12 times on Sunday, and 40 times during the weekend sweep of the Jayhawks. Coach Ritch Price looks at the strikeouts as an embarrassment.

“We’ve got to reduce the number of strikeouts,” Price said. “It’s embarrassing the number of strikeouts that we’ve had the last couple of series.”

The 6-5 victory for the Aggies (18-9, 6-3) ended another comeback bid. The Jayhawks’ (15-10, 3-3) inability to get the big hit — and usually have a strikeout instead — cost them the chance to keep their Big 12 record above the .500 mark.

Instead, after sweeping Texas to get to 3-0 in conference play, Kansas is right back where it started.

“Our goal is to usually cut down the strikeouts to five or less,” junior shortstop David Narodowski said. “That’s definitely what hurt us offensively. Not getting runners on bases, not hitting the ball, and not putting it into play with two strikes.”

Texas A&M starters accounted for 32 of those 40 strikeouts. The superior pitching that Kansas faced against Texas ended up costing them over the weekend. With the Aggie starters having their way with the Jayhawk hitters, Kansas typically started down a three- to four-run deficit throughout the series, and a six-run deficit on Sunday.

After freshman starter Lee Ridenhour kept Kansas in it during the first three innings, the bottom of the fourth inning broke what was a 2-0 game into a 6-0 blowout waiting to happen. A defensive miscue in the outfield allowed the inning to get away from the Jayhawks.

“When you’re in trouble you got to make all the plays behind your pitchers in order to give them a chance to get out of the inning without the inning blowing up.”

Kansas did not bow out though, when the road environment certainly would have expected it to. After expending a lot of energy the previous night to lose 7-6 in the bottom of the ninth, the Jayhawks rallied to score five runs throughout the six, seventh, and eighth innings. Narodowski said once the A&M starters were out that Kansas was able to do damage. Problem was though, that the Aggie starters were able to last until the sixth inning.

“We just let the starters go a little bit too long when we could of gotten a couple hits earlier to get them out,” Narodowski said.

Missed opportunities were the story of the game. Kansas left six runners on base on Sunday. Price doesn’t expect his freshman- and sophomore-heavy team to win on the road against ranked teams without bringing runners in when given the chance.

“You have to take advantage of those kind of chances if you are going beat someone as good as they are,” Price said.

The big hit just couldn’t come, however. After sophomore Tony Thompson knocked in two runs with the Jayhawks’ third consecutive hit in the bottom of the eighth, the next three hitters proceeded to go 0-3 and left one runner on base.

“The one last hit to score the run to tie it up or put us ahead, that just didn’t happen,” Narodowski said.

It ended up being Kansas’ last rally. The bottom of the ninth Kansas went down 1-2-3. The last at-bat? It summed up the game and the weekend series for the Jayhawks.

Struck out looking.

Freshman Finally Struggles

Lee Ridenhour, who was on a run of three consecutive quality starts (six innings pitched with no more than three runs allowed) had to come back down to Earth sometime, right? The wunderkind freshman pitcher had his first rough outing of the season against the potent Aggies lineup to fall to 3-2.

Power Outage — Again

The Jayhawks have yet to hit a ball out of the park in conference play, and in only one of the last eight games have they managed to hit a home run. The one was a notable exception — Tony Thompson’s two home run game against Western Illinois — but Kansas needs to find a consistent power threat in their lineup.

— — Edited by Casey Miles