Missouri Valley Conference tournament championship and
an NCAA regional — and, once there, to two more wins.
The image should remain a memorable one for Wichita State baseball fans: Moments after pitching the Shockers into the NCAA tournament, David Sanders, the unlikeliest of heroes, stood near the mound and pointed to the heavens in appreciation and triumph.
After a season of disappointment, the lefty with the big heart had performed when it mattered most. And so had the Shockers, who battled back from the losers’ bracket with four straight wins to claim the Missouri Valley Conference tournament championship.
The outing by Sanders, along with a dramatic 11th-inning comeback against Southwest Missouri State earlier in the tourney, stand out as two highlights of the 2003 season. Two of many, stressed Shocker coach Gene Stephenson.
Stephenson, WSU’s fiery leader, felt his team was unduly criticized throughout the season, particularly by the local media. No one has to tell him that WSU failed to win the MVC regular season title for the second time in three years, or that WSU’s 27 losses were the most since he took over the program in 1977.
But Stephenson looks at his team’s accomplishments and sees a season to be proud of. “It was a remarkable season,” he says two weeks after the year was over. “Nobody lost as many quality players as we did from the previous year, mostly due to the professional draft. I’m sure Joe Public thinks we had a bad year, OK, but we won the conference tournament, we got to the regional finals, we actually got further in the NCAA tournament than the year before.
Yes, we had some very inconsistent moments, and we certainly had some down times, particularly in the league on the weekends. But overall, especially the way we finished, we played as well as we could play.”
WSU’s road to saving the season began with that impressive victory over SW Missouri State. Facing elimination, the Shockers were down by three runs entering the bottom of the 11th but staged a late-night rally. The game, Stephenson says, should make everyone believe in miracles: “The whole thing is we never gave in, never quit.”
The same could be said of Sanders, who was expected to be one of the Shockers’ top pitchers yet faltered badly. But Sanders, a Tulsa, Okla., native known for his strong religious beliefs, turned in one of the top pitching performances in the Shockers’ storied history during the MVC title game against Southern Illinois. He tossed a complete-game four-hitter with 12 strikeouts, leading WSU to a 3-0 victory and into the NCAA tourney for the 21st time. “I’ve just pitched the game of my life,” Sanders told The Wichita Eagle, “and I know God is glorified.”
The Shockers won two games, both against Ole Miss, in a strong regional in Houston before being eliminated by Rice, a top-ranked team that went on to claim the national championship.
Stephenson is optimistic about next season, mainly because of the young and talented pitchers expected to return. In fact, the Shockers will boast perhaps the nation’s top sophomore in right-hander Mike Pelfrey, who enjoyed a simply dominant freshman season. He was named the Valley Freshman of the Year, a first-team All-American by Baseball America and invited to Team USA tryouts. Other freshmen pitchers performing well were Steve Uhlmansiek (8-3, 4.22), Jereme Foster (4-0, 2.87) and Noah Booth (3-2, 2.41)
Offensively, the Shockers, who scored only 12 runs in the four regional games, weren’t up to the standards of past big-hitting teams. “We plan to be better, go further,” Stephenson says about 2004. “For the first time in quite a while, we’ll have a senior class with some numbers and some leadership. There were some disappointments among a lot of our players not performing offensively. We’re looking forward to working with them and seeing if we can get it out of them.”
