K-State baseball wins Sunflower Showdown rubber match

In a span of three days, English twice popped go-ahead singles. The first spurred Friday’s win in the Sunflower Showdown series opener. Again Sunday with two down, the freshman outfielder boosted Kansas State’s rally in a 4-2 victory in the series’ rubber match. The Cats picked up a crucial series win with six games left on the regular-season slate.

They remain in seventh place in the Big 12 standings, one game out of fifth place. For a long period that seemed to begin with April 16’s shutout at Connecticut, Kansas State’s offense witnessed a dip. The Cats assembled three hits Friday in a two-run eighth before a Saturday shutout.

Down 2-0 on Sunday, K-State manufactured single runs in the fifth and sixth before Chuck Ingram and David Bishop found their way aboard via walk and single, respectively. After Bishop swiped second, English pounded Cooper Moore’s 1-1 pitch to right.

“The whole key to the day offensively was not panicking,” K-State coach Pete Hughes said after a 15-inning stretch with 10 Wildcat hits, one run. “Especially, you could have gotten down; look, we got no-hit last week (at Nebraska). We got shut out; (KU Sunday starter Evan Shaw) strikes out seven guys. And it’s easy to panic.

“Our guys just stayed with the process, keeping a good frame of mind.”

A positive frame of mind would be an asset for the Wildcats with two weeks left in a regular season that has a rapidly setting sun. They’ve seen a trio of shutouts since that defeat at Storrs, Conn., even on an offense that hits a very respectable .283 clip (Big 12 eighth). K-State hit .250 for Saturday-Sunday after a 10-hit, zero strikeout series opener.

Often, the small components in baseball add together for momentous events. K-State got back-to-back leadoff hitters abord in the fifth and sixth, advanced baserunners with steals, sixth-inning balk and cashed in with Ingram’s and Brady Day’s sacrifice fly-outs. Day got down 0-and-2 against KU’s Ethan Lanthier, took a pair of pitches before he fouled off three straight borderline deliveries. Day advanced the count to 3-and-2 before he sliced a deep fly to left that scored Brandon Jones and tied the game.

“We got to be able to situationally-hit to win these tight games,” Hughes said of the Cats’ 1- and 2-run weekend wins. You got to be able to get a guy in from third base with less than two outs. That (Day) was an unbelievable at-bat.”

Of course, the ingredients can be many to winning baseball. Middle reliever Blake Dean retired 11 of 13 batters after he took over for starter Josh Wintroub (Adam Arthur faced two). Dean fired strikes on 28 of 43 pitches and yielded two baserunners. Tyson Neighbors collected his sixth save with a ninth inning of work.

“Blake Dean was awesome. He came in and (did) damage control,” Hughes said. “I love seeing our freshman step up and doing big things in big games with (Dean) and Nick English.”

Up next

The Wildcats have the midweek off before traveling to Morgantown, West Virginia to face the Mountaineers (28-19, 12-12).