Baseball at Wichita State is a proud program with an illustrious history.

In case you forgot: WSU has 55 All-Americans, one national championship, seven College World Series appearances, two NCAA Super Regional appearances, 20 Missouri Valley Conference regular-season titles, and 17 MVC tournament titles.

Find those numbers anywhere else in the Valley? Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

You won’t. The baseball team here is something worth being proud of.

However, things have since changed.

The team is 4-10 (3-5 home, 1-5 away), and is the fifth best batting team in the conference — and the second worse in field percentage. With no conference games played at this point, the Shockers’ record has them as the second worst team in the Valley in front of Southern Illinois.

That is unacceptable. That’s not WSU baseball. And the players know it.

“It comes down to us as the players,” junior outfielder Daniel Kihle said. “Our coaches have done their jobs. They’ve brought in the players. We have a great recruiting class, one of the best we’ve had in school history.”

Kihle said he believes everything will ultimately come down to how the players respond because the coaches have put in the time, brought in the players and provided the resources.

“The coaches got us prepared,” Kihle said. “It’s about us going out there and doing what they taught us to do. We’re not doing the things we wanted or thought we would do, but it’s baseball.

“There are a lot of games left. We are putting in the hours and are doing more to get us prepared.”

Some of the newer things Kihle said the team is doing to get prepared is practicing in-game situations so when the time comes in the game, it’ll be almost second nature.

That’s a start.

But to be totally honest, we can’t place the blame 100 percent on one person. The Shockers — as all historically great teams — play a tough schedule where they travel and play teams in Texas and on the west coast.

Nevermind the recent NCAA drama with the sanctions on clothing and illegal discounts. We’re past it.

Could the suspensions and negative press play a hand in distracting the team? Sure. But great teams don’t make excuses. They deal with the results and fix them.

This team hasn’t given us any excuse and clearly they are putting pieces in place, so let’s continue to support our team and celebrate when they turn it around.

Historically, great teams always do.