CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia - Kansas State will look to rebound and keep its season alive on Saturday after a 7-4 loss to No. 12 national seed Virginia here at Disharoon Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the Wildcats ran into a powerful Cavaliers team that showed why it is hosting a Super Regional for the ninth time in the last 15 years.
K-State, 35-25, saw a 3-0 lead fall as Virginia (45-15) put together two runs in the fifth inning and two more in the sixth before Henry Godbout delivered the knockout punch in the seventh with a three-run home run that landed well beyond the left field wall, showing why the Cavaliers entered the night ranked second in Division I baseball in batting average to go along with 114 home runs.
The two teams return for Game 2 at 2 p.m. Saturday. They will play a third game at 2 p.m. Sunday if necessary.
"It was a great ballgame," K-State head coach Pete Hughes said. "That's why you play nine innings. Virginia hung out there and capitalized on a couple opportunities. From a coaching perspective, you hate giving up runs for not being fundamentally sound. In a few instances we were, taking nothing away from Virginia's offense, because when you hit a three-run homer with two outs, that's usually a deciding factor in a close game, and that's what they did.
"Right-hander Jackson Wentworth (5-5, 4.11 ERA) will get the start for K-State on Saturday. The 6-foot-1, 205-pound native of Urbandale, Iowa, missed his true freshman season in 2022 with Tommy John surgery, and after building back to form in 2023 is playing the best ball of his career this season. He was named to the Fayetteville Region All-Tournament Team.
Wentworth will go against right-hander Jay Woolfolk (3-1), 6.15 ERA, who put together the best performance of his career in Sunday's regional against Mississippi State by throwing into the ninth inning and fanning a career-high seven batters in his first start since March 17.
Virginia left-hander Evan Blanco earned the win on Friday to improve to 8-3. He entered as the only Cavalier in the starting rotation for the duration of the season with five of the team's eight quality starts this season. He had pitched five or more innings in eight of his last nine starts. He had allowed four runs in his last 29 innings pitched.
K-State has won a Super Regional game before. That came in 2013 in the program's first Super Regional, but the Wildcats went 1-2 at No. 3 Oregon State in the Corvallis Super Regional.
Eleven years later, the Wildcats are back. And they'll look to stick around a couple more days in Charlottesville.
"We've done it all year long, a two-out-of-three series," Hughes said. "Their mindset is going to be great. We're still two games away from going to Omaha, and we're one game from getting back into this series.
"Our guys will be resilient, they'll respond, they're a resilient group. That's what it's all about. You want to play in these important games in the month of June. It's resiliency and it's urgency to get back into this thing.
"There's really no telling how this story will end, except we know it will end. Each team entered with a three-game winning streak. K-State was 6-4 in its last 10 games and Virginia was 8-2.K-State lefty graduate Owen Boerema, who entered 6-3 and with a 5.07 ERA, took the mound for a pitching staff that had struck out a school-record 577 batters this season and boasted a 5.37 team ERA with a 2.49 strikeout-to-walk-ratio.
Boerema, a native of Litchfield, Minnesota, spent three seasons at Northeastern (Minn.), a Division III school in St. Paul, Minnesota, and prepared for this stage. It took a lot of hard work. It was while playing for the Mankato MoonDogs with fellow K-State pitcher Tyson Neighbors that K-State associate head coach Austin Wates first noticed Boerema. When Boerema entered the transfer portal, K-State came calling.
On Friday, he allowed four runs on seven hits with five strikeouts and three walks in 5 2/3 innings.
"I have a lot of confidence in the team," Boerema said. "It doesn't matter what two games you win, you have to win two. I'm confident we'll come back with a lot of energy, and I think it'll be a fun game."