The ISU club baseball team caught a pleasant surprise from its weekend series against South Dakota.

Despite dropping two of three games, the Cyclones got solid production from senior shortstop Matt Coffey, who finished the weekend with a batting average of .500 and three RBIs.

Coffey shined in the Cyclones’ 5-4 loss in the series finale. Iowa State trailed 4-0 when Coffey stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the first inning with two outs.

He saw a Bo Bruinsma fastball on a 2-1 count that he was waiting for, and took it over the left field wall to put the Cyclones on the board.

“It was the first time I’d seen that pitcher,” Coffey said. “I got ahead in the count, and I knew the fastball was coming. He put it right where I wanted it, and I was just able to power it over the fence.”

After taking a called third strike on the outside corner in his second at-bat, Coffey next stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the fifth.

The Cyclones trailed at the time 5-2, and after Brock Martin lined out to third base, Coffey would take a 1-0 pitch over the left field wall looking almost identical to his first home run.

“On the second one he put that pitch in the same spot as that first home run, so I just did the same thing with it,” Coffey said.

Coffey said he and his teammates felt compelled to do their best with Peterson throwing so well on the mound after a rough first two innings.

“He settled down after that first inning and held them to zeros,” Coffey said. “So it gave us batters a chance to show our support for him out there. We wanted to keep Petey in a close game since he was pitching so well in the later innings.”

The team knew Coffey was a hitter, but didn’t know he could hit it with that kind of power.

“I was a little surprised to see two bombs,” said ISU player-coach Jeff Peterson. “The wind helped a little bit, but it was great to see him make that kind of contact.”

The good old methods of hard work and perseverance seem to have worked Coffey.

“He deserves it,” Peterson said. “He’s one of our hardest workers on the team.”