SE: K-State Baseball Looks to Get Hot at Big 12 Championship

By Corbin McGuire

Time to get hot.

K-State baseball head coach Pete Hughes broke Tuesday's practice with these four words. A few hours later, he and his first Wildcat team bussed down to the Big 12 Championship in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. There, the Wildcats (25-31) look to do exactly that. As the No. 8 seed, they open the conference tournament against top-seeded Texas Tech on Wednesday at 12:30 p.m.

"You need to get hot," Hughes said, as the program makes its first Big 12 Championship appearance since 2016. "We have to have everybody (firing) on all cylinders."

The goal is to win the whole thing. Neither Hughes nor his players hid from that agenda. Their mindset to make it happen, after losing five of six to end the regular season, is to hit the proverbial reset button.

"It's a new season because it's all we have. We have to figure out a way to win the Big 12 Tournament so we can get into the national tournament so we can go to Omaha. The only way to do that is to win the Big 12 Tournament," Hughes said. "It's a day-to-day, survive-and-advance mentality. It's whatever you have to do to win that day, and then worry about tomorrow, tomorrow."

"It's a new season starting today," added Jordan Wicks, named Big 12 Freshman of the Year on Tuesday. "We know what we have to do coming into it. When we get everything going and we get rolling, we definitely have a chance to win this thing."

While K-State struggled to find wins to end the regular season, the Wildcats have confidence they can break out of this slump. Mostly, because they have done it already this season. K-State lost its first five Big 12 games this year but won five of six to follow, all five wins coming against ranked opponents.

"We know in the back of our minds that we have done it before, and we definitely can do it again," Wicks said. "I think, honestly, it just takes one moment to get rolling and get into that groove again."

The first win in that midseason hot stretch? Texas Tech.

K-State won the series finale, 5-4, to avoid a sweep. Even more, this win followed a 4-3 loss the day before, serving as both a painful memory and confidence builder for the Wildcats that they were very close to winning the series against the Big 12 regular season champion.

"A lot of us were sore after that series because we thought we should have won the series, honestly, so I think that gives us a lot of confidence going in, that we can compete with them and we will give them our best shot," Wicks said. "I think that really does add to our confidence."

Freshman outfielder Dylan Phillips agreed.

"That (win) was early in the year and I think that kind of started to turn around our season. We kind of hit our stride after that," he said, coming off a three-homer series against Kansas that pushed his season total to nine, the most ever by a Wildcat freshman. "Hopefully, it's not a new team playing against them but one playing with a new level of confidence going into that series."

It starts on Wednesday.

Winning the opener in the double-elimination tournament has proven to be crucial in the past. Since the tournament switched to a bracket-style format in 2011, every eventual champion won its first-round game.

"Obviously winning game one is going to be huge…playing to get another day," Phillips said. "I think we know we can beat anybody on any given day."

Kansas State University Athletics

SE: K-State Baseball Looks to Get Hot at Big 12 Championship

Players Mentioned

Dylan Phillips

Jordan Wicks

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