A sure way to win a baseball game is to have reliable hitting and pitching. Against Kansas on Tuesday, the Hawkeyes did just that in an 8-0 victory.

It started with some nice situational pitching on the mound from junior Hunter Lee, who is from Des Moines but was born in Overland Park, Kansas. He started the game by throwing three strikes in a row for a strikeout.

It did get a little rocky for Lee, though. Lee had runners on first and third with no outs in the second inning and forced a pop out a 6-4-3 double play to end the inning

In the next two innings, Lee forced six Jayhawks to come to the plate and go down without getting on base.

Senior Adam Ketelsen came into the game at the beginning of the fifth inning to pitch. He gave up no runs, allowed two hits, and earned seven strikeouts while being credited with his first win of the season. Combined, the pitchers had 11 strikeouts.

“Coach [Robin] Lund did an unbelievable job calling pitches,” Ketelsen said. “He came up with a game plan and he just basically just set it up and the best that we could do is just attack those strikes and we did it all day. And when we did that, you’ve established a fastball early, you can go slider, curveball, whatever and just attack them.”

Just like the Jayhawks, the Hawkeyes had chances early but failed to score. Unlike the Jayhawks, the Hawkeyes came around to scoring.

In the first inning, the Hawkeyes had bases loaded with one out but were unable to have any runners score.

Three runs came across the plate in third inning. With one out, junior second baseman Izaya Fullard singled up the middle, and then freshman first baseman Peyton Williams doubled to advance Fullard to third.

After a strikeout, junior shortstop Dylan Nedved had an infield single to Jayhawks’ shortstop, which scored one run earned and another on an unearned because of a throwing error by the shortstop.

It would only get better in the fourth inning. Freshman catcher Tyler Snep singled to start off the inning, and center fielder Justin Jenkins had a nice bunt to the right side of the field for a single. Right fielder Ben Norman got hit on the foot, which forced the bases to be loaded.

Fullard hit a sacrifice fly to right, and after a pitching change and a strikeout, senior infielder Zeb Adreon singled to left to bring in two runs to make it 6-0 Hawkeyes at the end of the fourth inning.

“I think we’re just putting up good at-bats all day,” Williams said. “It’s just a matter of time for the balls to start falling. Getting some consecutive hits back to back, starting to get better at-bats, that’s what really made the runs start flowing.”

Fast forward to the eighth inning, and Williams added an insurance run with an RBI single. Later, junior designated hitter Trenton Wallace was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to add another insurance run.

Duane Banks Field will be used again Wednesday at 2:05 p.m. for the second and final game of the Hawkeyes series against the Jayhawks. The Hawkeyes, who are now 9-5 on the season, would like to build off this game, especially since they used only two pitchers.

“That’s outstanding when we have to play another nine [Wednesday],” head coach Rick Heller said. “That gives us a lot of options heading into game two.”