With only 12 hours to enjoy some home cookin', the ASU baseball team headed right back out on the road for a two-game series against No. 10 Wichita State.
The Sun Devils will have to be sharp heading into Wichita, Kan., notoriously a tough place to play.
Before last weekend, head coach Pat Murphy said he wanted the team to start playing good baseball more consistently. The team responded by winning its second straight Pac-10 series, but Murphy said there is room for improvement.
"We need to be a whole lot better (come the postseason)," Murphy said. "We were in a lull recently, and we have moved out of that lull. It would be nice to get back to a weekend like Florida State, but that might be too much to ask for right now."
With the two-game set coming in the middle of the week, Murphy will call on junior Ty Marotz to take the mound for today's game, only the second start in his brief ASU career.
Marotz has thrown well coming out of the bullpen for ASU. Yet in his only start of the season, Marotz was unable to make it past the second inning.
Junior Dustin Pedroia, the Pac-10 leader in batting average (.414), on base percentage (.514) and runs scored (53), has been as good as ever for the Sun Devils. But more importantly for ASU has been the slow re-emergence of junior left fielder Jeff Larish.
Since Larish got pinch-hit for against Oral Roberts, he has recorded at least one hit and scored one run in all seven games.
Sophomore right fielder Travis Buck, who is second in the Pac-10 with 49 RBIs, is also coming off a strong homecoming performance at Washington in which he went 5-for-14 with four RBIs and a home run. The offense could be without senior Nick Walsh, who has been suffering with back problems.
Reach the reporter at matthew.schubert@asu.edu.
