Wichita State baseball hoping to keep momentum going vs. OU in Riverfront Stadium game

The Wichita State baseball team is headed downtown for its annual game at Riverfront Stadium on Tuesday night.

The Shockers will play Big 12 rival Oklahoma with first pitch slated for 6 p.m. at Riverfront Stadium. Tickets are available through the Wichita Wind Surge website.

WSU played the first game in the stadium’s history on April 10, 2021 in a 10-1 win over Houston, then hosted Oklahoma State in a downtown loss last April. WSU hopes to get back to its winning ways against the Sooners, a team the Shockers beat 6-2 at Eck Stadium just two weeks ago.

“We really value the chance to play downtown,” WSU interim head coach Loren Hibbs said. “(Wind Surge president) Jay Miller and all of those guys have been incredible to work with this time around and I’m just happy for our guys to get to play in that type of environment against a really good opponent. We want to keep this thing going for years to come.”

After finishing off a three-game sweep of Massachusetts this past weekend, WSU took Monday off. The team won’t practice ahead of its game at Riverfront Stadium, which is the same schedule it followed for last year’s mid-week game.

Hibbs said it won’t take much of an adjustment for the WSU players at the downtown ballpark.

“The playing surface there is incredible and (Ben Hartman) does a great job with it,” Hibbs said. “The guys are just excited to be playing in such a nice ballpark and we’ve got to be ready to go because Oklahoma is going to take our full attention, no doubt.

WSU will have plenty of momentum after outscoring UMass 38-6 in three straight run-rule victories over this past weekend. The three blowout wins were crucial in allowing WSU to recharge its pitching staff in a week where it played five games in six days.

Since an 11-5 start to the season, OU has lost five of its last seven games, including a four-game losing streak following a Big 12 series sweep at the hands of Kansas State.

Hibbs said to expect WSU to use several different pitchers in the mid-week game ahead of the team’s first American Athletic Conference series on the schedule with a road trip at Cincinnati (11-14) this coming weekend.

“We’ve played a lot of different styles of play so far in our non-conference schedule,” Hibbs said. “And that’s by design to try to get us ready for AAC play. Cincinnati is very comfortable at home (6-3 record) and they have been really good at home over the years. Winning games on the road in conference play is challenging, so we’ll go up there and have to compete.”

WSU starter Clark Candiotti and outfielder Chuck Ingram were named to the AAC weekly honor roll after their performances from last week.

Candiotti set a career-high with nine strikeouts in a 12-2 win over UMass, pitching six innings and allowing one earned run. He improved to 2-2 on the mound with a season ERA of 3.73. In five games last week, Ingram hit .476 (10-for-21) at the plate with three doubles, one triple and two home runs.