KU travels to Wichita State this evening to take on the Shockers. Wichita State (30-7) is ranked #14 by Baseball America and #21 in the RPI. The Shockers took down KU 7-3 at Hoglund on April 1st, so the Hawks will be looking to even the series the hard way, on the road. Shaeffer Hall (2-1, 5.40 ERA) will get the call for KU. He will be facing Tyler Flemming (2-1, 2.32 ERA). This will be Flemming's first start of the year, so most likely Wichita State is approaching the pitching tonight as a "staff day," (i.e., no pitcher planed to go more than three innings.) The game will be televised on Metro Sports (Sunflower 38, if you receive the channel). KLWN AM-1320 will have the game live. For those outside the Lawrence area just click here to access the streaming audio. Wichita fans love this game and it should be a nice night so the Hawks can expect to find themselves playing in front of 4,000+ hostile fans for the fourth consecutive game. Good luck. Kansas is playing great baseball right now so an upset tonight is not at all hard to imagine.
[Update: Shawn Shroyer provides a nice write up about KU's recent struggles with Wichita State in today's Daily Kansan. Shroyer's work is always worth checking out.
Kansas Wesleyan visits Hoglund Wednesday at 6PM. This game was added just yesterday to make up for one of KU's earlier rainouts. Wesleyan is an NAIA school so the game will not count toward's KU's NCAA or RPI rankings. This will only be the second meeting between KU and the KWU, which is surprising given the proximately of the two schools and the fact that both date back to the 19th century. Kansas Wesleyan is a United Methodist School with an enrollment of about 900 students located in Salina. As far as NAIA teams go, KWU is pretty good. Last year the Coyotes won their conference tournament. 2008 has also been good to the team. They will arrive at Hoglund sporting a 27-13 record (I believe). I could not find any on-line information for team or individual statistics. The Coyotes are receiving top-25 votes in the latest NAIA poll, and are battling with several other area universities for honors in Region IV. The six ranked regional teams include several familiar to KU fans: Saint Mary (19-17), the hated Sweedes of Bethany College (31-12), Park University (22-14) and Kansas Wesleyan. It should be a fun game. I will have to arrive late but hope to catch at least the last three or four innings.
[UPDATE:] RAINED OUT. WILL NOT BE MADE UP.