It had to hurt. The scoreboard provided all the proof.

In the fifth inning of Kansas University’s 15-3 baseball victory over Bradley on Friday, KU senior Ritchie Price smoked a line drive up the middle that struck Bradley ace pitcher Brandon Magee on the throwing arm.

In obvious pain, Magee took his time recuperating, but insisted he could stay in the game. Even so, Magee was hardly the same – eight of the next nine KU batters reached base, and the Jayhawks hung 10 on the scoreboard in that inning alone.

Game over, and Price’s line drive was the obvious spark that started the fire.

“I think that was the turning point,” Price said. “After that, he lost some of the command, and we were able to get control.”

A healthy Magee had the tools to stop KU. Going into Friday’s game at Hoglund Ballpark, he sported a 7-3 record and a 2.40 earned-run average. And despite giving up three runs in the first four innings, Magee kept Bradley in the game with plenty of baseball to be played.

But that fifth-inning break was huge, and the Jayhawks seized the opportunity.

“You could see he was really struggling,” KU coach Ritch Price said. “His velocity range dropped down. You could see he was laboring out there.”

Kansas sent 14 batters to the plate that inning, and the kicker was that all 10 runs were unearned. Two errors early in the inning proved devastating, and eight runs crossed the plate with two outs.

On the flip side, KU pitcher Kodiak Quick struck out eight in seven quality innings, and Kansas had home runs from Brock Simpson and Ryne Price even before Magee was struck. Price’s especially was surprising; the sophomore had missed a month with a wrist injury and wasn’t 100 percent swinging the bat.

Nevertheless, he drilled one over the high wall in dead-center field to put the Jayhawks up 3-2 in the third. It was the younger Price’s first at-bat since April 2nd, and Kansas never trailed after that.

“I was trying to work on using the whole field,” Ryne Price said. “I don’t know, somehow the ball carried out of the park.”

And helped carry KU to its 34th victory of the year. KU pounded out 14 hits, and fans at long last had the chance to see them more than once. A large video board installed a few weeks ago at Hoglund finally was up and running behind the right field fence Friday, showing lineups, statistics, replays and shots of the crowd during the game.

Still fighting for an NCAA Tournament berth, every victory counts for the Jayhawks in these last two weeks. They’ll play two more games today in the Jayhawk Classic – a 1 p.m. matchup against Bradley, and a 7 p.m. game against Northern Colorado.