What gives Wichita State baseball ‘hope’ for another AAC tournament run
One week of good baseball can help ease the disappointment of an underwhelming regular season.
Just ask Wichita State, which caught fire at the right time last season and came agonizingly close to winning the American Athletic Conference tournament and earning the program’s first postseason berth in a decade.
After entering the season with hopes of contending for a title, the Shockers (20-34) have instead piled up the third-most losses in program history this season.
But WSU arrives in Clearwater, Fla. this week on a 5-game winning streak with hopes of replicating last season’s run to Sunday’s championship game. The crucial start to the week begins at approximately 3 p.m. Tuesday when No. 7 seed WSU takes on No. 2 seed Charlotte (35-20) at BayCare Ballpark with the game streaming on ESPN+.
“It hasn’t been a year of a lot of up’s, but we’re playing our best baseball going into Clearwater,” WSU head coach Brian Green said. “We’re a confident group right now. We’re starting to click. We’re just a more productive team right now.”
There’s no simple answer to explain why a team with so much returning offensive production from last year’s 32-win club has so drastically underachieved. League coaches picked WSU second in the preseason poll and Green was welcoming title expectations before the season.
The offense inexplicably lost its pop and has failed to execute in areas of emphasis, like strikeout-to-walk ratio and 2-strike hitting, while the pitching staff has regressed without aces like Caden Favors and Tommy LaPour.
“There is extreme disappointment in our offense this year and I’ve really beaten myself up over it and I wear it,” Green said. “We have not done a good job and that’s my responsibility. I’m really disappointed in myself for the offense and I’m really disappointed in our pitching. Those things are not about the players. They’re about the coaches.
“We’ve got to do a better job as coaches of training in the fall. I think we gave a lot of credit to our players that they would be the same guy that they were last year and that hasn’t been the case.”
The situation became so bleak that WSU entered this week faced with the possibility of failing to qualify for the 8-team conference tournament in a 10-team league. The team responded by sweeping Memphis to not only secure a spot, but also leapfrog Rice for the No. 7 seed and avoid playing a top-25 UTSA team in Tuesday’s first game.
Much like last season, when the Shockers found a spark in May after a brutal April, the team appears to be playing its best baseball heading to Clearwater.
“We had really high expectations going into the year and we thought it was going to be a very successful year, but things just didn’t go the way we planned,” WSU senior captain Mauricio Millan said. “It’s been a rough year, but we’re starting to get that swagger back. We’ve won five straight now and we’re playing a lot better baseball. It’s kind of the same feeling like we had last year.”
Millan is one of several key contributors who experienced the thrill of last season’s run to the championship game, which came down to the final inning against Tulane.
WSU has plenty of experience back from that run, including Jordan Rogers, Camden Johnson, Josh Livingston, Jaden Gustafson, Kam Durnin, Ryan Callahan, Brady Hamilton and Caleb Anderson.
“We know from last year that anything can happen if you get hot in the tournament,” Rogers said. “Last year we just took off and that’s been our motivation for this year. Now that we’re in, we can definitely do some damage in the tournament, no doubt in my mind.”
What the Shockers learned from last season’s run was how important it was to win the first game on Tuesday to earn a day off on Wednesday.
That challenge will be even greater this week, as Charlotte is likely to start ace Blake Gillespie, who compiled a 5-1 record with a 1.39 earned run average in conference play this season. He pitched just 56 innings this past Thursday, which would give him more of a rest advantage compared to WSU’s No. 1 starter, Grant Adler, who threw 101 pitches on the same day.
As of Sunday evening, Green was noncommittal on Tuesday’s starter. But he was sure about one thing.
“We’re going to do everything we can to (win) to get to Thursday,” Green said. “In this tournament, if you can win the first one and get the day off, it’s so huge. Obviously, we’re not extremely deep on the mound, so if we can get that day off, it’s huge. We’re probably looking at Grant, but we still are going to need three or four guys to win on Tuesday.”
Despite the difficult season, WSU has kept its locker room intact, which Green gave credit to senior leaders like Millan and Rogers.
That’s why he believes the Shockers have a legitimate chance to make a run again in Clearwater.
“There’s just been so much frustration this year, and yet it has never boiled over,” Green said. “It’s more like, ‘I just can’t believe we can’t get this thing going.’ We’ve been seemingly an arm or two short every weekend. We’ve been seemingly a bat or two short every weekend. But our kids have stayed the course and I think last year’s experience gave our older guys some perspective. We’ve all been waiting for it to turn around and it just didn’t happen, but we picked ourselves up off the mat and we’re playing some good baseball right now.
“They’ve all individually done it this season, we just haven’t done it collectively together. That’s what gives me hope.”
American Athletic Conference baseball tournament schedule
Tuesday
Game 1: No. 5 Tulane vs. No. 4 Florida Atlantic, 8 a.m. (ESPN+)
Game 2: No. 8 Rice vs. No. 1 UTSA, 47 minutes after Game 1 (ESPN+)
Game 3: No. 7 Wichita State vs. No. 2 Charlotte, 3 p.m. (ESPN+)
Game 4: No. 6 East Carolina vs. No. 3 South Florida, 47 minutes after Game 3, (ESPN+)
Wednesday
Game 5: Loser of Game 1 vs. Loser of Game 2, Noon (ESPN+)
Game 6: Loser of Game 3 vs. Loser of Game 4, 47 minutes after Game 5 (ESPN+)
Thursday
Game 7: Winner of Game 1 vs. Winner of Game 2, Noon (ESPN+)
Game 8: Winner of Game 3 vs. Winner of Game 4, 47 minutes after Game 7 (ESPN+)
Friday
Game 9: Loser of Game 7 vs. Winner of Game 5, Noon (ESPN+)
Game 10: Loser of Game 8 vs. Winner of Game 6, 47 minutes after Game 9 (ESPN+)
Saturday
Game 11: Winner of Game 7 vs. Winner of Game 9, 8 a.m. (ESPN+)
Game 12: Winner of Game 8 vs. Winner of Game 10, 47 minutes after Game 11 (ESPN+)
Game 13: Loser of Game 11 vs. Winner of Game 11, TBD (if necessary, ESPN+)
Game 14: Loser of Game 12 vs. Winner of Game 12, TBD (if necessary, ESPN+)
Sunday
Game 15: Semifinal Winners, 11 a.m. (ESPNews)
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