Led by a quality start by Lincoln Sheffield and a three-run home run from Ty Smolinski, Kansas State baseball rallied to defeat Columbia, 5-2, Saturday afternoon at Tointon Family Stadium .
“Good weekend,” said eighth-year head coach Pete Hughes in a statement. “It’s all about winning the series, and I thought we won a series against a really good Columbia team that’s going to win a lot of games this year, which was no surprise to me.”
Down 2-0 headed into the bottom of the second, Smolinski belted a three-run homer to score the deciding run and lift K-State to its first series win of the season. With Saturday’s win, K-State improved to 8-4, marking the second-best record through the first 12 games of the season in the Hughes era.
“It was a grinding series win, and I’m proud of our guys,” Hughes said. “We were undermanned on the mound, and that’s what good teams do — you pick each other up. We had a lot of kids stand out in doing that for us. We needed a great start today since we were light in the bullpen, and we got that from Lincoln Sheffield. That’s what you expect to get out of your senior strike-thrower and ultimate competitor.”
Sheffield (3-0) surrendered just two runs over 6 2/3 innings for his first quality start of the season. After allowing both runs in the opening frame, the left-hander retired 19 of the next 23 batters he faced and allowed two runners to reach scoring position. The Flowood, Mississippi product finished his third start of the year holding Columbia (1-5) to six hits with a season-high eight strikeouts.
