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Arizona ace Chase Silseth deals in the top of the first inning of Thursday’s game against Wichita State.

 Photos by Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star

The atmosphere at Hi Corbett Field on Thursday wasn’t quite back to normal, but it was close.

For the Arizona Wildcats, it was business as usual.

With fans in the stands at Hi Corbett for the first time this season, Arizona won its 10th game in a row, defeating Wichita State 8-5. The Wildcats (11-2) haven’t lost since the second and third games of the season against Ball State on Feb. 20 and 21.

No. 16 Arizona’s play isn’t the only thing that has changed since the opening weekend. The UA welcomed back a limited number of fans. Right before the first pitch, one could be heard bellowing, “Let’s go Wildcats!” The announced attendance was 583. The maximum for the time being is 1,600.

“It was so great to see some of the fans that care about Arizona baseball,” UA coach Jay Johnson said. “As you saw people coming in, it felt really normal, like almost a little bit of butterflies.

The Arizona Wildcats are allowing limited fans back at softball and baseball home games. Here's how you can attend.

“I like our team obviously, and it's really awesome to be able to share this team with this community that supports us. It's a big milestone today, thinking about everything that everybody's been through over the last year.”

The game was atypical in other ways. Although they had eight runs and 12 hits, the Wildcats didn’t pile up extra-base hits (one) or walks (four) at the same rate they did at last week’s Frisco College Baseball Classic.

In their five-run third inning, the Cats capitalized on the Shockers’ struggles in the infield. A pair of infield singles plated Arizona’s first three runs. Mac Bingham’s bunt single made it 4-0. Then, after another infield single, Jacob Berry scored on a fielder’s choice.

UA starter Chase Silseth rebounded after a shaky performance in Frisco that raised his ERA from 2.92 to 7.56. The right-hander tossed a season-high seven innings, allowing three runs (one earned). He yielded five hits, struck out six and didn’t walk a batter.

Silseth’s struggles last Thursday – when he allowed 10 runs in 4 1/3 innings against Oklahoma – stemmed from a lack of command.

“He just got a little bit too much of the plate or missed the zone by too much,” Johnson said earlier in the week. “When you do that, the hitters tend to see the ball a little bit better off of you. When your misses are big and your ball’s in the zone, that 95 (mph) starts to look a little bit more like 90, and good hitters are going to capitalize on those mistakes. I'm not overly concerned about that.”

Silseth recognized what went wrong last week and did a better job of keeping the ball down against Wichita State.

“Last week at Frisco is definitely not something that happens very much, but it was definitely a learning experience,” said Silseth, who improved to 3-0. “Fastball command is what it came down to last week, left some balls up. When you leave balls up, they're gonna put more in play, more line drives.

“This week, when I kept the ball down, most of their hits were groundballs through the hole. There's nothing you can do about that. But definitely just all about fastball command from last week to this week, just being able to command the fastball down, in, out a lot better.”

After cruising through the first three innings, in which he allowed only one baserunner, Silseth encountered trouble in the fourth. Back-to-back singles put runners on first and second with no outs. Silseth appeared to have worked his way out of the jam, but center fielder Donta’ Williams couldn’t catch Hunter Gibson’s line drive. The two-base error scored two runs and made it 5-2.

Williams redeemed himself in the bottom of the fifth, driving in Daniel Susac with a line single to right. Tony Bullard’s line single to right-center in the previous at-bat drove in Berry, who had led off the inning with a double. Williams, Berry and Ryan Holgate each had three hits.

Wichita State (6-4) threatened again in the eighth and ninth. Down 8-4 in the eighth, the Shockers had runners on first and third with one out against reliever Quinn Flanagan. After a mound visit from pitching coach Nate Yeskie, Flanagan induced an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play.

Flanagan yielded a one-out walk and a double in the ninth, putting runners on second and third. Yeskie called in Preston Price from the bullpen, and he promptly struck out pinch-hitter Seth Stroh.

A wild pitch made it 8-5, and a walk brought the tying run to the plate. With the crowd cheering him on, Price struck out Corrigan Bartlett to end the game.

“It was nice seeing people out there again,” said Price, who notched his second save. “Hearing that instead of just nothing like the first couple of weeks – just knowing that the crowd is behind me and that they're excited to see what happens.”

Inside pitch

  • Arizona last won 10 games in a row within a season at the end of the 2019 campaign. The Wildcats then won the first three games of last season for a 13-game overall streak that’s the longest of Johnson’s tenure.
  • UA first baseman Branden Boissiere went 0 for 2 to snap a 10-game hitting streak but walked three times and scored a run.
  • Wichita State’s coach is Eric Wedge, who previously managed in MLB for Cleveland (2003-09) and Seattle (2011-13). Wedge was named the Shockers’ coach in May 2019. Wedge played for Wichita State from 1987-89 and helped the Shockers win the College World Series in ’89.
  • Brian Jeffries called Thursday’s game on AM 1290, which will carry most of the rest of the Wildcats’ games this season. The radio broadcasts are also simulcast on the UA’s live stream.
  • The scheduled starters Friday night are left-hander Spencer Hynes (1-1, 6.14) for Wichita State and righty Chandler Murphy (2-0, 3.18) for Arizona.

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Contact sports reporter Michael Lev at 573-4148 or mlev@tucson.com. On Twitter @michaeljlev