The fight for a high seed in the Big 12 is always an exhausting one, and the No. 15 baseball team’s 15-11 victory over the Kansas State Wildcats on Sunday at L. Dale Mitchell Baseball Park showed just how hard a team has to fight to get that seed.

The Sooners (32-12, 10-9 Big 12) remain in fourth place after taking two of three games from Kansas State (30-12, 10-7 Big 12) this weekend, but the series victory, which is OU’s ninth in a row against the Wildcats, was important for both OU’s momentum and making the rest of the conference schedule a little easier.

“[Winning this series was] very important,” said sophomore right fielder Cody Reine, who went 3-4 with a home run and five RBIs Sunday. “Being able to take two out of three against [the Wildcats] really helps us in the long run.”

The Texas Longhorns, who are in the midst of a 20-game winning streak, lead the Big 12 with a 19-2 conference record and basically have the regular season title and the No. 1 seed for the Big 12 tournament secured. The fight for second place comes down to percentage points.

The Wildcats hold the second place spot, and the Texas Tech Red Raiders, who took two of three games from the Missouri Tigers this weekend, trail Kansas State by .017 points in the standings.

OU has two conference series remaining on its schedule, and both teams, the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Kansas Jayhawks, hold lower seeds in the conference. The final two series should not be cakewalks, but they are winnable.

The team’s goal during conference play has been to win two of three games each weekend, head coach Sunny Golloway said. The Sooners have done that in four of their six Big 12 series that lasted three games—the Baylor series was cut short to one game due to weather—so they have succeeded in accomplishing that goal.

“I told our guys it isn’t about coming out sweeping and getting into second place right now, it’s about winning series,” Golloway said. “That’s the way we’re going to approach it—going two out of three. If something else happens in our favor – great—but we’re going to go out and try to win two out of three every weekend.”

The Sooners are scheduled to face Arkansas-Little Rock on Tuesday before a three-game series against Oklahoma State that begins in Tulsa before moving to Oklahoma City.

OU lost to OSU in the teams’ last meeting April 13 in Stillwater. That game did not count towards conference records.