Missouri State (19-30, 5-13) vs. Southern Illinois (26-26, 8-9)
Hammons Field, Springfield, MO
- 1:00 p.m. Thursday (Kickham, MSU vs. Forer, SIU)
- 6:30 p.m. Friday (Meade, MSU vs. Hoelscher, SIU)
- 2:00 p.m. Saturday (Doyle, MSU vs. Cornell, SIU)
Missouri State enters this weekend’s series in 8th place in the eight team Missouri Valley conference. With this being the final series of the regular season, and depending on what Bradley does against Indiana State, the Bears will likely carry the eight seed into the tournament. Although they have had many bright spots this season, including a solid pitching staff, they have come up short during conference play. The Bears will need to lean on their consistency at home, where they are 13-9, and their impressive 8.77 strike outs per nine innings, good for 12th nationally.
To combat the impressive pitching of MSU, the visiting Salukis will look to use their impressive team batting to get through the weekend. SIU has six regular players with batting averages above .300. Although the Saluki offense has been a bright spot, the defense has been less than stellar. SIU has committed a MVC-worst 83 errors on the year.
Evansville (28-24, 8-10) vs. Illinois State (26-20, 14-4)
Braun Stadium, Evansville, IN
- 6:00 p.m. Thursday (Dennis, UE vs. Maines, ISU)
- 6:30 p.m. Friday (Lloyd, UE vs. Sorkin, ISU)
- 2:00 p.m. Saturday (Biggs, UE vs. Learnard, ISU)
Illinois State needs one win to tie for the Valley regular season title, and two wins to clinch the championship outright. The Redbirds have been impressive this season, winning five of their six conference series. ISU looks to Kevin Tokarski to help secure the schools’ first outright regular season crown. Armed with a .448 batting average, Kevin seems to always be ready to step up for the Redbirds.
Evansville will be looking to play spoiler this weekend, as they could finish anywhere between 3rd and 7th place come conference tournament time.
Bradley (18-29, 6-12) vs. Indiana State (32-15, 9-8)
Duffy Bass Field, Peoria, IL
- 6:00 p.m. Thursday (Cooper, BU vs. Petricka, ISU)
- 2:00 p.m. Friday (Bircher, BU vs. Rodriguez, ISU)
- 1:00 p.m. Saturday (Jensen, BU vs. Van Skike, ISU)
Indiana State travels to Peoria and tries to rebound from last weekend’s conference series loss against Evansville. If things go well for the Sycamores this weekend, they should be looking at a matchup with Creighton in Wichita next week.
The Braves are looking to avoid slipping to 8th place in the Valley, and hope to establish some momentum heading into the MVC Tournament next week in Wichita.
