Nobody personifies rise of K-State baseball like red-hot slugger Kaelen Culpepper

It is only fitting that Kaelen Culpepper and the Kansas State baseball team have entered the national spotlight together this week as stars of the NCAA Tournament.

Even though many different players and coaches deserve credit for the way the Wildcats blitzed the Fayetteville Regional, none of their impressive victories over Louisiana Tech, Arkansas and Southeast Missouri State would have been possible if not for the connection that K-State coach Pete Hughes made with Culpepper several years ago.

Culpepper is the new face of K-State baseball and he might be the hottest hitter in the entire country. He is coming off a three-game stretch in which he hit for the cycle, then belted a three-run homer off touted pitcher Hagen Smith, then got two more hits and began reaching base via intentional walks.

Hughes suddenly looks like a genius for venturing outside the Wildcats’ usual recruiting area to land their star shortstop out of Memphis.

But neither side knew this was coming. Their journey has been a story of trust, loyalty and resolve.

“We lucked out with KC, that’s for sure,” Hughes says now. “He had a lot of upside. He was a switch hitter at the time and a pitcher. He loves to talk about his pitching prowess. But we love athletes and we love kids who can run and have a high skill set. We love kids who are focused and motivated to be good at this game. He checked all of those boxes.”

It’s easy to see what K-State liked about Culpepper. But few other college baseball teams jumped on the bandwagon.

For most of his life, Culpepper was an overlooked recruit from Memphis who couldn’t convince a single SEC program to take a chance on him. Looking back, he thinks he would have ended up at South Alabama had he not committed to the Wildcats.

For the past decade, K-State baseball has been mostly irrelevant. This is the first time it has reached the postseason since 2013 and just the second time it has played in a Super Regional ... ever. Try as they might, the Bat Cats have never been to the College World Series.

They can change that by winning a three-game series at No. 12 Virginia this weekend at the Charlottesville Super Regional.

Still, that lack of history made K-State a bit of a tough sell for Culpepper.

His ears perked up late in the recruiting process when schools like Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi State began to show some interest. But the Wildcats recruited him hard for two solid years, and he rewarded their persistence with a commitment.

“It was just the community and the coaching staff,” Culpepper said. “From the first day I talked to (the coaches) I knew there was something there. I knew I was going to find a home out here at Kansas State and that’s exactly what I did. They first saw me my sophomore year. It was a long two years, but I pulled the trigger and I have been happy every day since.”

Indeed, Culpepper and K-State have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship over the past three years.

Culpepper, a 6-foot infielder who is batting .329 with 11 home runs and 56 RBI this season, is now a potential first-round pick in the 2024 MLB Draft.

His teammates marvel at him whenever he steps up to the plate.

“You can’t throw him the same pitch twice,” K-State closer Tyson Neighbors said. “There are a lot of guys that you can expand the zone, maybe, after you throw a good pitch. But with him he is so locked in that it feels like there’s not a pitch you can throw at any given time that could work. You almost have to get lucky against him.”

Perhaps his best trait: he thrives under pressure.

That much has been obvious since the start of the Big 12 Tournament. Culpepper has played in six games since the regular season came to an end and during that time he has reeled off 12 hits. Two of them were home runs and two more went for extra bases. Add on four walks and his on-base percentage during that time was a whopping 67%.

“He was pretty dialed in,” Hughes said. “i can tell when he’s dialed in. It’s usually in the big moments. He likes the big stage and has really embraced that.”

What made all those timely hits a pleasure for Hughes to watch was the fact that Culpepper didn’t have to stay with the Wildcats this season. He put up incredible stats as a sophomore, too, and the SEC schools that once ignored him were suddenly very interested.

If he wanted to transfer and cash in on NIL opportunities elsewhere, Hughes has made it abundantly clear that he could have.

The same was true for several other K-State starters. Some feared they might look elsewhere after the Wildcats missed out on the postseason. But when Culpepper decided to stay the rest of the roster fell in line.

Fast forward a year, and Culpepper played “with a chip on my shoulder” in the NCAA Tournament while his team won three of its biggest games in recent memory.

“They chose to come back,” Hughes said, “because there is this thing called loyalty and valuing teammates so you can have moments like this together.”

Five years after they first made contact with each other, just about anything seems possible for Culpepper and the Wildcats. Even a trip to Omaha.