Wichita State baseball’s season has ended after losing two games at the American Athletic Conference Championship.
After losing to No. 2-seeded Charlotte, the No. 7-seeded Shockers needed a win against South Florida (USF) to keep their run in Clearwater, Florida, and season alive. Instead, WSU (20-36) lost in a back-and-forth affair against the No. 3-seeded Bulls on Wednesday afternoon, 4-3.
The Shockers’ 36 losses this season tie for the second-most in program history.
USF (30-24) will move on and play the loser of Thursday’s game between Charlotte and No. 6-seeded East Carolina on Friday.
Taking time to reflect on the season, WSU head coach Brian Green said he’ll have to evaluate his performance as head coach.
“I’ve got to do a better job, starting with the toughness of the program,” Green said. “Obviously, I’m excited about going out and making some adjustments from a recruiting standpoint, and getting our roster much more athletic. But, you know, everything falls on me.
“There’ll be an intense evaluation after this season because the expectations are certainly much higher than the performance here.”
Through four innings, no team could gain clear control of the game. The Shockers held on to a slim 1-0 lead on two hits up to that point in the game.
It wasn’t until the fifth inning that the game became more lively. USF tied the game after sophomore Brady Hamilton hit a Bulls batter with the bases loaded to plate their first run.
Hamilton started on the mound and had been flawless until the fifth. He retired 10 straight USF batters after giving up a walk in the first inning and carved four strikeouts along the way. He gave up no hits in his 4 2/3 innings pitched.
In the fifth, Green noticed Hamilton reverted to old habits, which created inconsistency on the mound.
“He’ll get forward and he’ll lose his release point,” Green said. “It’s a mechanical thing driven by the mental game when he gets really sped up. That’s something he’s been able to fend off a lot, he’s been really good for us as of late. But, he had it going and then just lost it.”
Junior Nick Potter had to step in for Hamilton during his fifth-inning jam, which Green said was unfortunate given how well Hamilton had been up to that point. Still, Potter got out of the fifth without allowing another run.
Potter carried the momentum from his stint in the fifth inning into the sixth. But during the seventh, disaster struck.
USF took advantage of a throwing error by Potter and a single to center field to go up by two runs, 3-1. A double in the seventh for the Bulls before they scored on the error was their first hit of the game, as WSU was threatening a no-hitter.
“Credit (to) South Florida for grabbing a couple and putting the game on the ground,” Green said. “And then credit us for bouncing right back.”
The Shockers quickly erased the two-run gap USF created in the seventh inning with two solo home runs to start the eighth.
Green went to sophomore Lane Haworth to pinch-hit in the top of the eighth inning. On the second pitch of Haworth’s only at bat of the tournament, he sent the first home run of the game over the right field wall to cut the deficit to one run. Later, senior Josh Livingston sent one of his own to the same spot as Haworth to bring WSU back into the game, 3-3.
After Potter’s shaky outing on the mound tied the game again, junior Aaron Arnold (5-3) was called out of the bullpen in the bottom of the eighth to close the game.
In Arnold’s third pitch of the inning, he allowed USF’s junior Matt Rose to rifle his second home run this season and take the go-ahead lead. In the ninth, the Shockers went down quietly, facing their third 1-2-3 inning since the game got tied up in the fifth inning.
“You could probably see, I’m not the biggest power-hitter,” Rose said, pointing to his 5-foot-6 frame. “But, I mean, sometimes I can get into it — and thank goodness today I did.”
Green said with the loss ending the Shockers’ season, the team will “get our breath underneath (us).”
“I think emotions are pretty high and there’s a lot of sadness and all those things like it always is when a season ends,” Green said. “… (But) we’ve got a job to do in terms of getting this thing right over the summer, and making sure come fall time, we’re making a run to get back here with a more quality effort.”
