The Kansas State baseball team lost its third-straight Big 12 series this weekend against the Oklahoma State Cowboys in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The series opened up Friday as the Wildcats won their first Big 12 game of the season. K-State used a grand slam by senior first baseman Jake Scudder and had an outstanding pitching performance from junior right-hander Justin Heskett for the 10-4 win.
“Just a great effort all the way around tonight from our guys,” head coach Brad Hill said to K-State Sports. “Tremendous patience at the plate and we were able to string together quality at-bats that us going early. That really helped the overall confidence and put us in a positive mindset the rest of the game after scoring those early runs.”
The BatCats were ready to go right away, as they scored six runs in the first two innings of the game, including the grand slam by Scudder. This was the most runs scored by K-State in Stillwater since 2001.
The Wildcats could have scored even more, as they left 14 runners on the bases. Heskett went six innings and only allowed three-earned runs for his third win of the season.
“Again, Heskett was outstanding tonight,” Hill said. “I really loved how he competed tonight after battling a little bit in that first inning. Happy to see him follow up last week’s start with another strong outing.”
In game two, it was the Cowboys who evened up the series with a 13-3 win over the Wildcats.
K-State scored in the top of the first inning, but Oklahoma State responded by scoring two in the bottom half of the inning.
It was a good outing for Oklahoma State starting pitcher Tyler Buffet, who threw six and two-thirds innings and had four strike outs while only allowing three earned runs.
The Wildcats stranded another big number as they left 11 on base in the losing effort, however, Wildcat freshman outfielder Will Brennan paced the team with three hits.
In the rubber match of the series, it was the Cowboys who came out victorious, winning 6-3 to take the series.
The Cowboys scored three runs in the first inning on three hits off of K-State starting pitcher sophomore Hudson Treu.
K-State got two of their own in the top of the third and then one more in the sixth, but it wasn’t enough as the Cowboys added to their first inning runs with one run in the fifth, seventh and eighth innings.
The Wildcats are now 16-14 overall and 1-8 in Big 12 play. K-State will host Nebraska on Tuesday night before hosting Texas Tech next weekend.
