WICHITA, Kan. – Paxton Wallace homered twice, and Jack Sigrist, Hunter Gibson and Garrett Kocis each homered once as the Wichita State University baseball team thumped the Omaha Mavericks, 14-5, in the opening game of a three-game series Friday, March 26, at Eck Stadium, Home of Tyler Field.
 
Wichita State (10-8) and Omaha (8-10) are scheduled to play game two of the series Saturday, March 27, at 2 p.m.
 
The five home runs from the Shockers marked the most round trippers in a game for WSU since it went deep five times against South Florida in 2018.
 
Wallace went 3-for-5 with a pair of homers and a double and drove in five runs to lead Wichita State at the plate, while Couper Cornblum, Sigrist and Gibson each had two hits.
 
WSU right-handed starter Liam Eddy (2-3) picked up the win on the mound after allowing four earned runs on five hits with five strikeouts and one walk in seven innings.
 
The Shockers jumped out to a 2-0 lead with a pair of runs in the first inning after Cornblum worked a one-out walk and Wallace belted a 3-2 pitch over the right field wall for his first home run of the game.
 
WSU bumped its lead up to 3-0 in the second when Sigrist hit a towering solo shot to left field for his first-career round-tripper and put up two more in the third after Kocis reached on an Omaha error and Gibson went deep to centerfield for his first homer of 2021.
 
The Mavericks answered and plated four in the fourth, trimming the Wichita State advantage to 5-4, but the Shockers responded in the bottom-half of the inning, using small ball to plate a run after Seth Stroh worked lead-off walk, moved to second on Andrew Stewart's sacrifice bunt, and crossed home plate on back-to-back bunt singles from Sigrist and Cornblum.
 
WSU blew the game open in the fifth, scoring seven runs to increase its lead to 13-4. Ross Cadena got the scoring rolling with a two-run single through the left side, before an RBI single to right from Cornblum and a two-run double off of Wallace's bat drove in three more runs.
 
Kocis provided the exclamation point for the inning, hitting a two-run shot that cleared the batter's eye in dead centerfield for his team and American Athletic Conference-best 10th homer of the season.
 
The Mavs cut the Shocker lead to 13-5 with a run in the eighth, but Wallace crushed a lead-off solo home run down the left field line in the bottom of the frame for his second of the game and fourth of the season, to push the Wichita State advantage to 14-5.
 
Chris Esposito went 2-for-4 with a homer and two RBI, while Brayden Eckhout also compiled a home run, leading Omaha offensively.
 
Maverick right-hander Joey Machado (1-3) suffered the loss after giving up six runs – four earned – on six hits with three strikeouts and three walks in four innings of work.