WICHITA — It was exactly the kind of start No. 16-ranked Kansas State was looking for out of pitcher Kayvon Bahramzadeh at a packed Eck Stadium Tuesday night.
The Wildcats have struggled on the road of late, dropping their last two contests and four of their last five.
Yet, those road woes ended, at least for one night, as the sophomore turned in an impressive and much-needed outing against Wichita State.
Bahramzadeh's five innings of work, coupled with timely Shocker fielding errors, led to a 7-4 K-State victory and a series sweep of their in-state rival.
"Kayvon was outstanding tonight," KSU coach Brad Hill said. "We have been looking for that out of him."
After a rough outing against BYU last week, the right-hander worked through five innings, giving up just two runs on six hits against the Shockers.
"I've just been working hard and battling through some stuff," he said. "I have been kind of struggling throughout the year and I just kept grinding it out and finally had some good results."
Before heading out to the mound to try for his sixth inning of work, Bahramzadeh tossed five complete innings of shutout baseball.
But after Wichita State's Preston Springer led off the sixth inning with a single, Bahramzadeh would make perhaps his only mistake of the night when he left a fastball over the middle of the plate to Wichita State's Cody Lassley.
The senior drove a towering home run over the left-field fence, and suddenly the Wildcats' 2-0 lead vanished.
Bahramzadeh's night was finished, and it looked as if the road woes that have haunted the Wildcats recently, made the trip
with them to Wichita as well.
"It was my fault for leaving him out there in the sixth inning — we got what we needed — he gave us five strong innings and I left him out there too long," Hill said.
The Wildcats bullpen would prevail, however, and the offense rallied late in the game, taking advantage of several Shocker mistakes — including a dropped infield fly in the eighth inning, leading to the 7-4 victory.
"You have got to take advantage of errors, they had two today and we didn't have any. If you take advantage of errors and pitch well, usually you are going to win the game," KSU senior Adam Muenster said.
With the win, the Wildcats (27-8) swept the season series against WSU (22-14) after winning the first meeting in Manhattan 8-5 on March 30. It marks the first time since the 1952-53 season that the Wildcats have swept back-to-back series from the Shockers.
Wichita State picked up three runs in the sixth inning, taking a 3-2 lead into the seventh, and with the Wildcats recently struggling bats, it seemed it would be tough for them to battle back into the game, especially on the road where K-State had dropped two straight.
Eck Stadium proved to be even a more daunting task than the Wildcats' previous road trip at BYU with a record-setting crowd of 7,217 in attendance — the most to for a regular season game at Eck.
"We knew we had to come out here and hang with them," Muenster said. "It was going to come down to those last few innings — everyone knew it. It was just who was going to get on the board first and we happened to."
But the Wildcats got those late runs beginning in the eighth inning, highlighted by a two-out single by Ryan Moore after the Shockers dropped infield pop-up to give the Cats a 4-3 lead.
"It's very disappointing," WSU coach Gene Stephenson said. "We made way too many mistakes defensively. All we have to do is catch a pop-up or be in position to execute the bunt stuff we normally do, which is frustrating."
Capitalizing on those mistakes was all the K-State bullpen needed, led by Evan Marshall and closer James Allen, as both shut the door on the game and the series.
The Cats return to Big 12 action this weekend when as they hit the road again — this time to Missouri for a three-game series beginning Friday. First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m.
Game notes
• Nick Martini stole three bases Tuesday night, marking the first time a Wildcat has had three steals in a game since Muenster stole three bags against Baylor in 2008.
• Tuesday's victory marked the first time in school history K-State has won four straight games at Eck Stadium.
• The Wildcats have now won five straight games against the Shockers and nine of their last 12 in the series.
- Photo K-State Sports Info
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