Zac Elgie may have come to Kansas instead of going to play professional baseball, but until Tuesday, Elgie, a freshman first baseman, hadn’t had a memorable moment yet in college.

He had not had a breakthrough game to prove to his teammates and himself why major league scouts were willing to draft him last summer.

For Kansas, Elgie’s emergence was better late than never.

Elgie’s two-run single with one out in the top of the ninth propelled Kansas to a gritty 5-4 victory against Iowa on Tuesday night. And Elgie can finally relax.

“It definitely feels good to get it out of the way and finally start seeing multi-hit games,” Elgie said. “It feels good to get that off your chest and contribute to help the team win.”

Elgie went 3-for-5 at the plate, a career-high in hits with another career-high of three RBI. The final two are what sent the Jayhawks back to their hotel happy. They came off a first pitch fastball that coach Ritch Price told Elgie in a previous at-bat to not lay off of again.

“Coach Price said you should be looking for that first-pitch fastball that you see in the strike zone,” Elgie said. “I took that advice into the last at-bat and it worked out for us.”

Following a game that saw Kansas and Baylor combine for eight home runs, neither team had an extra-base hit in Tuesday’s contest. That’s the main reason why the Jayhawks had only five runs total while collecting 16 hits.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of a game where there was no extra-base hits before,” Elgie said. “But 16 hits, I’ll take that every day.”

Five of those 16 singles came off the bat of sophomore right fielder Brian Heere. Heere set a career-high in hits and was not retired in any of his five at-bats. As much as Heere was ready to talk about Elgie’s clutch hit, Heere couldn’t recall the last time he went 5-for-5.

“It was probably junior high or little league or something,” Heere said, chuckling.

It was Heere’s fourth hit in the top of the seventh that tied the score at three, setting the table for Elgie’s magic two innings later. Heere raised his batting average to .360 after struggling to keep his average above .200 in February. Heere said that before the game he had some of his best batting practice work.

“I felt really good in batting practice. I felt like I had a good batting practice session,” Heere said. “I was just seeing the ball well and putting good swings on the ball.”

But Heere was just as quick to turn the focus to Elgie. Kansas failed to produce in a couple of run-scoring situations before the ninth inning even started and Elgie’s bat bailed them out

“We didn’t have very many clutch hits early on in the game,” Heere said. “Then Elgie comes up and gets a really big hit.”

— — Edited by Chris Hickerson