Shocker baseball blasts Wildcats behind Coy’s five hits

Johnny Coy is no stranger to impressive statistics during his 3-year playing career at Wichita State.

His streak continued Tuesday night with a personal best.

Coy went 5-for-5 with three RBI to lead the Shockers (28-20) to a 10-3 win over the Kansas State Wildcats (19-27).

It was Coy’s first five-hit game of his Shocker career. He is batting .428 over his last five games.

“I was getting pretty good pitches to hit, I was getting pretty good swings and things went pretty well,” he said.

All of his hits became contagious, and pretty soon, everyone got involved in the offense.

WSU put on a hitting clinic with 17 hits in front of a season-high home crowd of 5,046 fans. Micah Green went 3-for-4 with two RBIs. Dayne Parker and Erik Harbutz each had two hits.

“That’s one of the best feelings in baseball, when somebody gets up there and starts an inning off big,” Parker said. “One guy gets a hit, and you can start jumping on pitches early. Whenever we start jumping on pitches early, that’s usually when we start to get going.”

The Shockers broke the game open in the sixth inning. All four of their runs scored came with two outs. Parker’s RBI-single drove in Harbutz. Coy hit a two-run double, and Casey Gillaspie’s RBI-single gave WSU an 8-3 lead.

Shocker fans received a minor scare in the eighth inning. Coy tripled to right-center and pulled his left hamstring as he was making his way to third base. Mikel Mucha pinch-ran for Coy, and his career night came to an end.

Coy described the injury as a “little pop” but said he didn’t think it will be that serious.

Head coach Gene Stephenson joked that Coy wasn’t used to running that much during a game.

“The reason he pulled a hamstring is because he hadn’t had that many hits during the whole year and is not used to running that far,” Stephenson said.

Coy took it in stride. After all, all he could do at that point was enjoy the win.

“He’s got a sense of humor about everything, and that’s what I like about Gene,” Coy said.

Shockers’ reliever TJ McGreevy (2-2) earned the win after coming in for Tobin Mateychick, pitching three scoreless innings.

WSU will play at Indiana State (34-11, 8-4 Missouri Valley Conference) in a three-game series starting Friday at 5:30 p.m.