‘They’ve got to figure it out’: Wedge challenges Shocker baseball after 0-3 start
Changes, one way or another, are coming on the Wichita State baseball team following an 0-3 start to the season.
After the Shockers were swept on the road by Louisiana Tech, currently projected to be an NCAA Regional team, coach Eric Wedge had some choice words for his team on his Monday night radio show.
“This is not the way we play. This is not Shocker baseball, this is not Eric Wedge baseball,” Wedge said. “Either you figure it out or you got to move on. I’m not trying to be a tough guy, but ultimately there’s a reason why people are champions and why they’re not. I understand what that looks like. It’s my job first, I take the total blame, to make sure they understand that.”
WSU managed to hold leads early in the first two games of the series, but its undoing was a combination of poor bullpen work (7.82 earned run average) and failure to generate offense in clutch situations (three total runs after the fifth inning in three games combined).
It wasn’t the information Wedge was hoping to discover the opening weekend, but it was valuable nonetheless.
“We found out a lot and we’re going to be better for it,” Wedge said. “For me, it’s about winning a national championship. For me, it’s not just this year, but the next year and the year after. For me, I want to find out where we are and find out who gets it and who understands who our program is, then move forward.”
That’s why Wedge challenged Loren Hibbs, who is in charge of scheduling, to go out and use his connections to build a top-notch nonconference schedule for the 2022 season. Hibbs accomplished just that, as the Shockers will play another road game at Oklahoma on Tuesday, then play at Texas State on Wednesday, followed by a three-day tournament in Corpus Christi, Texas against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (Friday 6 p.m.), Pepperdine (Saturday 2 p.m.) and Iowa (Sunday 11 a.m.).
“I don’t care what the critics say, I don’t care what the fans say, all I know is what it takes to be a champion,” Wedge said. “We are loaded up here for the first three weeks of the season and we might be 0-12 or we might be 6-6, hell I don’t care, whatever we are, we’re going to be better for it.”
Wedge said this year’s team has more physical toughness, more athleticism, but the mental toughness is still a work in progress. He wants the change to come from the top of the roster, starting with the veterans this week.
“We’ve got a group of veteran players here, to be honest, aren’t holding up their end of the bargain,” said Wedge, who mentioned he has told the players the same thing. “Ultimately, they’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got 24 new players this year and they understand what’s going on. So if the veteran players can’t figure it out, then that’s on them. Ultimately, you have to make sure you’re accountable for everything you’re doing.”
McKinney leads WSU softball to 2-2 finish at Arkansas tournament
There was some good and some bad in the Shockers’ showing at the Razorback Invitational.
The good: Wichita State took down Illinois, a top-25 team in one major poll, in an 8-3 victory. The bad: the Shockers losing a stunner, 4-2, to Longwood, a team that had just one win prior to the game.
WSU battled back on the second day to run-rule Western Illinois, 11-0 in five innings, before running out of steam against No. 10 Arkansas in a 7-4 loss. The Shockers moved to 6-3 on the season, as they continue to challenge themselves in competitive weekend tournaments.
Sydney McKinney, the reigning American Athletic Conference Player of the Year, returned from injury to finish batting .438 for the weekend with a double, two triples and two home runs to go along with five runs, five runs batted in and a slugging percentage of 1.125. McKinney is hitting .516 for the season.
Up next for the WSU softball team will be another weekend tournament, this time in Charlotte where the Shockers will play two games on Friday (Northern Iowa, 9 a.m.; Charlotte, 2 p.m.) and on Saturday (Minnesota, 11:30 a.m.; Charlotte, 4:30 p.m.) before finishing with Minnesota at 9 a.m. Sunday.
This story was originally published February 22, 2022 at 12:11 PM.
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