K-State baseball crushes SEMO to reach Super Regionals for second time in history
The Kansas State baseball team is heading somewhere it has visited only one other time in the history of its program.
K-State advanced to the Super Regional round of the NCAA Tournament with an easy 7-2 victory over Southeast Missouri State on Sunday at Baum-Walker Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
It is impossible to overstate how big of a deal that is for coach Pete Hughes and his roster.
The Wildcats have only reached the NCAA Tournament five times, including this season. And only once (in 2013) have they advanced beyond the regional round of games ... until now.
“Relentless, that’s a great word to describe this team,” K-State coach Pete Hughes said. “It’s been that way all year long. They took on one of the most demanding travel schedules and they did it with a smile on their face. Just a great group of kids. They love playing with that KS on their chest and playing for that community. Every coach and every player in the dugout came here to win regionals, Super Regionals, and raise the standard of Kansas State baseball.”
Up next: a trip to No. 12 Virginia for a three-game series that will decide who goes to Omaha.
K-State survived and advanced with another impressive outing Sunday.
That is all we have seen from the Bat Cats this postseason. Few, if any, teams have played better since the NCAA Regionals began on Friday. They won the Fayetteville Regional with three straight victories that featured a 19-4 blowout of Louisiana Tech, a gutsy 7-6 win against No. 1 seed Arkansas and a workmanlike result against SEMO.
Hughes kept his team motivated after those first two wins by advising K-State’s players to stay “greedy.” They certainly listened and then played like a team that wanted more.
They won Sunday evening’s game in an unusual way. Instead of manufacturing runs with walks, bunts and a few timely big hits, the Wildcats tortured the Redhawks with 12 singles. That was the only type of hit they got on Sunday.
No home runs, no triples, no doubles. K-State did reach base on three walks, but it was otherwise just an avalanche of base hits.
SEMO couldn’t stop K-State from hitting the ball to gaps in its defense and the Wildcats were able to turn all those singles into seven runs and one of the most meaningful victories in program history.
Brady Day and Chuck Ingram led the Wildcats with three hits apiece.
Kaelen Culpepper was held to just two singles after he hit for the cycle against Louisiana Tech and then crushed a three-run homer against Arkansas.
“It means a lot, I’m glad I was able to perform at a high level to help our team win,” Culpepper said. “I wasn’t really coming here just to win awards, I wanted to win a regional, and that’s exactly what we did.”
The Wildcats also got strong contributions from their pitching staff. Ty Ruhl started the game and allowed just two hits in four innings of work. K-State held a 7-0 lead when he was replaced by Cole Wisenbaker, and he also prevented the Redhawks from scoring any runs.
Both of K-State’s first two pitchers allowed plenty of SEMO hitters to reach base, but they kept getting out of jams and forced the Redhawks to strand nine runners.
That turned out to be a big enough lead for the Wildcats to protect, even though SEMO did score two in the final two frames.
Relief pitcher JJ Slack celebrated the final out by doing a back-flip in front of the mound.
Now the Wildcats are within reach of going somewhere they have never been. They are halfway to making their first College World Series.
This story was originally published June 2, 2024 at 9:05 PM with the headline "K-State baseball crushes SEMO to reach Super Regionals for second time in history."