It worked.
At 41-16-1, a constant showing in Baseball America's Top 25 and a handful of broken school records later, K-State earned that first-ever regional on Monday as the No. 2 seed in the Houston region with a first-round game against Xavier (38-19) set for 2 p.m. on Friday.
While it is the next game on the Wildcats' postseason schedule, Hill is starting to talk about what got the Wildcats into the 64-team field.
"We felt that it was big when we got to the Big 12 tournament for the first time," Hill said. "And then we made it again. With that, we gained an expectation to make the Big 12 tournament the next year. So now, with this, expectations are raised."
In Xavier, the Wildcats will play another first-time NCAA tournament participant. Rice is the top seed in the four-team regional with a first-round game on Friday against Sam Houston State.
"Number one, it's the first, and that's always the hardest, no matter what," Hill said.
While K-State has defeated Xavier six times in the series history — including a three-game sweep in Manhattan in 2006 — Hill said the Musketeers are familiar in another way.
"Xavier is a mirror image of us," he said. "They're a team that likes to pressure, like us, and they like to run and take some bases.
"They have a kid in Ben Thomas who is a dangerous pitcher, and they throw in a lot of other good pitchers too. Their closers are very good."
K-State doesn't know a lot about Sam Houston State yet.
"We just think of them as the University of Texas, San Antonio," Hill said. "They have a lot of Texas kids and play big team all the time.
"Rice is Rice. They have a great pitcher, play great defense and on offense, they have kids that can hit in the clutch. They have high expectations and a lot of confidence."
With historic proportions of the upcoming game, Hill said a big key in making sure his players keep the same approach as they've had all season. The sixth-year coach is making sure his coaching staff does the same.
"As coaches, we don't want to change our approach," he said. "More than anything else, we have to make sure we don't change. Number one, there can't be any better teams than we faced in the Big 12 tournament — and that's the way we go into this."
Hill points to the conference tournament victory against Baylor as an example of the Cats at their best — a game in which A.J. Morris led KSU to a 9-4 win.
"The Baylor game was the best we've played since the BYU series," Hill said. "We executed well, we pitched well. Thomas Rooke was back playing well. It was the most solid game we played in a long time.
"If we can put together a few more like those, I like our chances."
