Shocker baseball beats No. 7 East Carolina for 1st home sweep of ranked team since 1991

The brooms were out at Eck Stadium on Sunday afternoon, ready for when the Wichita State baseball team put the finishing touches on its three-game sweep over No. 7 East Carolina.

The Shockers not only completed the three-game sweep with an 8-0 win, but total dominated the seventh-ranked team in the country. WSU outscored ECU 23-3 to vault to a tie for first place in the conference standings and became the first American Athletic Conference team to sweep the Pirates since 2018.

It is the first sweep by WSU (24-15, 8-4 AAC) over a ranked team at home since taking three from No. 10 Creighton in 1991 and the first series sweep of any kind against a top-25 opponent since beating Long Beach State in 2006.

“We want the brand to come back,” said WSU two-way star Payton Tolle. “We know what the history was here and we want to create our own history. That’s something that we want to keep rolling. National buzz is great, but we’ve got to keep taking care of business one game at a time.”

After nearly a decade of being dormant, the Shockers are rolling under interim head coach Loren Hibbs.

WSU is currently on a six-game winning streak with wins this season over No. 16 Oklahoma State on the road, a pair over Oklahoma, its first road win at K-State in more than a decade, its first AAC series victory at Tulane and its first AAC series win over Cincinnati. And now the Shockers are tied atop the AAC standings with Houston with four weekend series left in the regular season, looking for their first conference championship since 2010.

While an at-large berth to an NCAA Regional remains a long shot for WSU, which had an RPI of 127 entering the week, there’s no doubt the Shockers are playing their most consistently good baseball in quite some time.

“I know it’s cliche, but honestly it’s day by day around here,” Hibbs said. “Every day you show up, you get your work done and compete. These guys have bought into what we’re telling them; they’ve bought into being taught; and they’ve bought into a lot of things that are core values that we’re going to keep doing around here. These kids have put in the work and it’s really good to see them get rewarded.”

East Carolina entered with one of the top pitching staffs in the country, but it was the Shocker pitchers who stole the show this past weekend.

Payton Tolle set the tone with a complete-game, two-hit shutout in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader, then Derby native Grant Adler nearly matched him with a gem of his own in Sunday’s series finale. Adler threw 122 pitches, topped out in the high 80s and still managed to limit ECU to three hits in the first shutout of his career. Throw in staff ace Clark Candiotti’s five-plus innings of work and Jace Miner’s work in relief and WSU only needed four pitchers to get through 27 innings against the Pirates.

“Everyone has their days and today was mine,” said Adler, who improved to 4-2 and lowered his season ERA to 2.56. “I kind of took the (pitching coach Mike) Pelfrey mentality into this game. They know what you’re throwing, try to hit it. I just kept coming after them and I did my best to keep them off the board and it just worked out.”

Sunday’s game was a scoreless tie through four innings, but the Shockers broke through with five runs in the bottom of the fifth. Kyte McDonald, Sawyre Thornhill and Jack Little loaded the bases, then Brock Rodden and Garrett Pennington each walked home runs for a 2-0 lead. Tolle doubled the lead with a two-RBI double to center, then David Herring capped off the inning with a RBI single of his own.

RBI singles from Pennington and Tolle and a RBI double by Herring highlighted the scoring in the sixth inning, as the Shockers cruised to an 8-0 lead.

“We’ll take more kids like Adler, like Tolle, like Brock Rodden,” Hibbs said. “I can keep going up and down the list, but kids who want to work and want to come in and compete. We’ll take them. Come to Wichita State and play baseball for us.”

After a disappointing 21-36 campaign last season, the Shockers (24-15) have already exceeded their win total from last season and could push for their best season since their last NCAA Regional appearance, which was later vacated, in 2013.

“We’ve got a lot of people that like to compete in that clubhouse,” Rodden said. “Just a lot of energy. These guys are great to be around. Always having fun, always a smile on their face, always having a really good time. That’s what this game is about. If you have a good attitude about it, go out and compete every single day, then good things happen.”