Monday, April 24, 2006
Tyler Link caught the Jayhawks’ hope of a series sweep when he dove into the KSU letters mowed into the outfield grass and caught the ball in the top of the ninth inning.
Senior centerfielder Matt Baty stood at second base, waiting for Morrison. He took off as Morrison connected. Link then intercepted Morrison’s line drive. If the line drive had dropped, the game would have gone to the bottom of the ninth inning. As a result, Kansas lost to Kansas State on Sunday, 5-4, in Manhattan.
“I thought we were going to extra innings for sure,” Morrison, sophomore third baseman, said. “I can’t really fault myself. I’ve got to give that guy credit for the effort, it was a great play. They battled the whole game and got the ‘W.’”
Although they lost on Sunday, the Jayhawks had already clinched the series with a pair of victories on Friday and Saturday.
“In reality, it was a good weekend. However, it could’ve been really special to get the win on Sunday,” Morrison said. “We made some mistakes that kind of cost us.”
A string of costly errors and untimely hitting would later finish the game, yet starting pitchers Kodiak Quick (7-3) and K-State’s Chase Bayuk (6-2) began the game efficiently. Each allowed a base hit and ended each lineup’s first-inning threat with a strikeout.
Kansas State scored first, in the third inning from an RBI single from third baseman Jared Goedert.
Kansas jumped on board in its next at bat with a sacrifice fly from freshman first baseman Preston Land.
The rivals then began a give-and-take scoring relationship. After Kansas State scored a run in the fourth inning, senior infielder Jared Schweitzer hit his third home run of the season in the top of the fifth inning. The long fly ball cleared the fence and tied the game for the second time in as many innings.
The lack of their usual starting second baseman hurt the Jayhawks in the sixth inning, though.
Kansas State shortstop Eli Rumler tapped a choppy ground ball up the middle toward Schweitzer. Schweitzer booted the ground ball across the infield. A Wildcats run scored on the play. Before this happened, a Morrison error put Rice on, sparking the defensively unsound inning.
“That’s always a question with a loss or when something goes wrong on the infield,” Morrison said, when asked if second baseman Ryne Price would have changed the game’s outcome if he had not been recovering from an injury. “But I think our infield’s carried ourselves well through this kind of injury-plagued year we’ve had so far. You can’t fault anyone. Everyone’s giving 110 percent all the time.”
The pair of unearned runs ended the same-pace scoring effort.
Surrendering only two runs, but charged with four, Quick took the loss after six innings of work. Bayuk notched the victory, allowing just a pair of runs in his six-inning stint. Kansas State closer Daniel Edwards collected his second save after replacing reliever Ben Hornbeck in the ninth inning.
Kansas continued to help its in-state rivals prevent the sweep with costly errors. With two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning, Rice reached again on a Morrison error. Kansas’s fourth error of the game resulted in a Kansas State RBI single.
— Edited by Hayley Travis
Baseball Notes:
The record-setting crowd that turned out for Saturday’s 5-2 Kansas victory didn’t reach half that amount for Sunday’s series finale.
The loss was Quick’s first in his last six starts. Before Sunday, Quick’s last loss was more than a month ago, March 19, at Baylor.
Freshman catcher Justin Ellrich hit his first career home run on Sunday. Ellrich sent the ball over the “Hit it Here” sign on the Willie’s Sports Bar and Grill right field advertisement.
“Even though I’m from Missouri, I’ve always hated K-State,” Ellrich said. “I like KU, obviously I’m here, but I’ve hated K-State my whole life. So it’s definitely big time for me to go yard for the first time.”
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