Shocker baseball season ends on devastating walk-off homer in AAC championship game
A month ago, the situation on Sunday afternoon in Clearwater, Florida would have seemed impossible.
The Wichita State baseball team tied entering the ninth inning of the American Athletic Conference tournament championship game with the program’s first bid to an NCAA Regional in 11 years right there for the taking.
With the way April was going? No chance with the Shockers dropping 17 of 21 games at one point.
But a combination of veteran leadership, resilient players and a fiery first-year coach in Brian Green turned the improbable into Wichita State’s reality at BayCare Ballpark.
And that’s what made the 11-10 loss to Tulane, on a two-out, walk-off home run by No. 9 hitter Jackson Linn, even more crushing with the team right on the doorstep of what would have been a monumental achievement.
Contending for championships and NCAA bids wasn’t supposed to happen this soon, particularly with a team that had just three players on the roster when Green arrived last June.
But a team with only a few returners, a lot of junior-college transfers and a talented freshmen class made Shocker baseball fans feel alive for the first time since the Gene Stephenson era concluded in 2013.
They won 10 of their last 12 games to reach Sunday’s final, including a pair of wins over No. 9-ranked East Carolina in Clearwater. They were scrappy and unafraid, but ultimately ran out of arms in their fifth game in six days.
For a second straight game, WSU received a gutsy, short-rest start, this time from freshman Tommy LaPour, who pitched four innings on two days’ rest after throwing 115 pitches in Thursday’s 14-4 win over East Carolina.
Tulane tagged LaPour with a pair of home runs to build an early 3-2 lead, but WSU scored five runs on five hits in the top of the fifth inning to open up a 7-3 lead.
After Kam Durnin was hit by a pitch, Camden Johnson followed with a bunt single, then Lane Haworth and Dayvin Johnson both waited on breaking balls to pull RBI doubles down the right-field line. Josh Livingston added a RBI single, then Mauricio Millan brought home another run, despite grounding into WSU’s fourth double play of the game.
But trouble arose as soon as WSU dipped into its bullpen, as Tulane rattled off a walk, walk, hit by pinch, single and single in the first five at-bats against WSU relievers. Jack Mount, the third pitcher of the inning, managed to escape the jam without further damage, but the Green Wave trimmed the deficit to 7-6.
It proved to be only temporary.
No. 9 hitter Jackson Linn led off the bottom of the sixth inning with a home run, then Gavin Schulz blasted another long ball, Tulane’s fourth of the game, to stake the Green Wave to a 10-7 lead with seven straight runs. The rally was extended by a mistake from Durnin at shortstop, but Seth Stroh made a diving grab in right field to strand a runner on third base.
Like the team has in the month of May, WSU showed its resilience by battling back in the top of the seventh inning. Livingston mashed his fourth home run of the week in Clearwater, a towering, two-run shot over the right-field fence, which was shortly followed by a solo shot from Seth Stroh.
WSU was held scoreless in the eighth and ninth innings, as the WSU combination of freshman Jeremiah Arnett, making his first appearance of the week, and Hunter Holmes combined to record 10 straight outs until the walk-off home run by Linn.
Holmes had recorded the first two outs with ease and had just thrown two straight strikes to Linn. But on a breaking ball down and out of the zone, Linn tracked it well and sent a no-doubt home run well over the wall in left-center field.
It was a devastating ending on a team with key seniors, like staff ace Caden Favors, Stroh, Johnson and closer Nate Adler. But with a deep and talented class of freshmen, the Shockers could be set up for continued success if Green manages to keep the group together in the era of the transfer portal.
