But KU officials had to be sweating the fact the $100,000-plus piece of high-tech machinery might start smoking due to overload, and a bomb by KU left fielder A.J. Van Slyke that carried more than halfway up the 60-foot structure didn’t help.

“If the video board would have been in place, I probably would have hit myself,” Van Slyke said, referring to how his mugshot will be shown during future at-bats. “I was just trying to break in the new scoreboard.”

Van Slyke had plenty of help at the plate. Kansas and Kansas State combined to light up the new scoreboard for 26 runs and 22 hits as Kansas defeated its rival, 15-11, in this season’s second game of the Sunflower Series.

“I was on the field before eight this morning, and I felt like I had a baseball in my stomach,” said KU coach Ritch Price, whose Jayhawks (28-21 overall, 5-11 Big 12 Conference) managed only two hits in a 7-0 loss to the Wildcats on Friday night in Manhattan.

Jared Soares/Journal-World Photo

“This was a big-time win. I’m really proud of the way we responded with the bats.”

But things didn’t start spiffy for the Jayhawks. Kansas replayed Friday’s first-inning meltdown in the first inning Saturday when KU freshman third baseman Erik Morrison allowed K-State its first base runner on another error — his 23rd miscue on the season and KU’s league-worst 90th boot.

A wild pitch by Kansas starter Tyson Corley, much like Kodiak Quick’s wild ball Friday, gave KSU a run as the Wildcats plated two in the first.

But unlike Friday’s skimpy offensive setback, KU’s bats were bursting Saturday.

Kansas jumped to a 5-2 lead after one inning. Van Slyke got the Jayhawks on the board with a groundout RBI that scored Matt Baty, who had led off with an infield single.

KSU starter Mitch Walter walked in the Jayhawks’ second run, then freshman Ryne Price cleared the bases with a deep double to left center.

“We know we’re a good hitting team, we just were out of synch yesterday,” said Price, who with Van Slyke tied their career highs with four RBIs each.

Kansas State (23-19, 7-13) shot back with five runs in the second to silence the crowd of 1,233. But in a game that went three hours and 21 minutes and featured 10 different pitchers, the offensive output was far from over.

KU tallied two runs in the third, fourth, and fifth innings, then took a 12-10 lead when Jared Schweitzer extended his career-best hitting streak to 17 games when he smacked a solo home run to right in the sixth.

“I think I just closed my eyes and swung really hard,” Schweitzer said.

KSU added its final run in the seventh, but Van Slyke slammed his ball in the bottom half of the inning and the Jayhawks added another run for good measure in the eighth.

Kansas, which can win its first Big 12 series of the season with a win in today’s 2 p.m. contest against K-State at Hoglund, also could move out of the Big 12 cellar. While Kansas can’t match either the Wildcats or Texas A&M’s seven league victories, the conference standings are based on winning percentage — where a KU win coupled with losses by the Wildcats and Aggies could move the Jayhawks into the eighth and final conference postseason tournament spot.

“If we win tomorrow, we will have accomplished our goal for the weekend and have something special to play for in the last three series of the season,” Ritch Price said.