This weekend the Jayhawks sent a message about their six-game home run drought to start the season.

Forget it ever happened. It was an aberration. It’s just not their style.

“We always knew we could do this,” sophomore third baseman Tony Thompson said. “We just weren’t doing it for the first few. I don’t think anything’s changed, we’re just putting better swings on the ball. I think everything’s starting to come together for us, it just took a few games.”

Since the power outage at the start of the season, Kansas has powered seven home runs in their last four games, including back-to-back jacks by senior catcher Buck Afenir and Thompson in the fourth inning of Sunday’s game. The recent power is making the Jayhawks a little more comfortable with their offense.

“It’s definitely good to know that with one swing of the bat Tony or Buck can put a two-spot up on the board,” said freshman pitcher Lee Ridenhour, who threw three scoreless innings in relief Sunday and will start Wednesday night against Wichita State. “Where before it was just small ball, base hits, moving runners around, definitely this past weekend and North Dakota the bats are coming alive.”

The offensive charge is being led, still, by sophomore third baseman Thompson, who is in the midst of a 19-game hitting streak, tied for fourth longest in school history. The sophomore is hitting .395 and now has the team lead with three home runs and 14 RBIs.

It’s not a steep drop off past him though, as pre-season all-conference catcher Buck Afenir has stepped into the lineup and leads the team with a .500 average. He’s added two home runs and seven RBIs. He started his power surge with a home run that cleared the left field fence, hit a tree behind the wall and had enough power behind it to bounce back into the field of play. Coach Ritch Price was in awe of the strength of the contact.

“That ball Buck hit is about as hard as I’ve seen a ball jump out of here in the seven years that I’ve been here,” Price said. “That ball was absolutely — looked like Manny Ramirez, as hard as that ball was hit.”

Afenir said though the 0-for-6 games isn’t likely to happen again, two home runs a game wasn’t a realistic expectation either.

“I wish I could say that, you know, we’re going to hit 70 bombs this year. I think you should just look to hard contact, bringing guys around. We’re more geared to a different sort of baseball right now,” Afenir said, and paused.

“But if we get a couple bombs in the process, we’ll be happy.”

— — Edited by Realle Roth