LAWRENCE — In their first five-set match of the season the Kansas State Wildcats came away with a win on the road over rival Kansas in the Sunflower Showdown on Wednesday night.

K-State recovered from a poor fourth set to fire away at KU in the fifth and get the win 22-25, 25-19, 25-18, 18-25, 15-9.

Senior Nataly Korobkova led the No. 17-ranked Cats with a season-high 20 kills — surpassing her previous high of 17 against UC Irvine. Fellow senior Jenny Jantsch also had her best match of the season with her second double-double. Jantsch also tied her season-high in kills at 11 and digs with 12.

Jantsch came up with a big play early in the fifth set to force a KU timeout and pull ahead by three points. On a tip attack by the Jayhawks (7-7, 1-4 Big 12), Jantsch went low for the dig, popped back up quickly and Soriana Pacheco set the ball to Jantsch and she killed the ball on a long tip to the back corner where she got a number of her kills. The kill and dig on the play were season highs for Jantsch.

Junior middle blocker Kelsey Chipman came alive in the fifth set with back-to-back blocks for K-State (14-2, 4-1) to move ahead 8-4 when the teams switched sides of the net. The teams traded points back and forth after the Wildcats made it 9-4, and the Jayhawks dug themselves a hole with a service error to make the score 13-8 Wildcats. Another kill by Korobkova made it 14-9, and an error by KU was the final point giving the Cats  the win.

Head coach Suzie Fritz said her team waited until the end to play strong, but it was just in time.

"We played very well in Game 5," Fritz said. "If you're going to play well, the fifth game is a good time to do it."

The last time the two teams played to five sets in Lawrence was in 2004, with the Wildcats winning that contest as well. K-State has won four five-set matches in a row in Lawrence. The last time a Sunflower Showdown went five sets and the Wildcats came up empty was November 16, 1994.