Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Baseball To Host Evansville This Weekend
04/18/2002 | 12:00:00 | Baseball
April 18, 2002
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Carbondale, Ill. - Southern Illinois University (19-14, 7-9 MVC) will attempt to win its first league series of the season when the University of Evansville (12-20, 3-9 MVC) visits for an important Missouri Valley Conference series at Abe Martin Field this weekend.
Although the Salukis are currently fifth in the MVC and Evansville is in eighth place, SIU head coach Dan Callahan expects a tough MVC weekend with the Purple Aces.
"It's a Valley weekend so you don't know what's going to happen. Every team has quality pitching and good hitters so we're going to have to come out and play. We still have four weeks of MVC play to move up in the standings," added Callahan.
"We can't swing the bats like we did in the doubleheader against SMS last Saturday (20 strikeouts in 15 innings). We didn't score many runs in the first three games at SMS. We can't expect to score all our runs in a few innings and win. Our offense is better than that and we have to spread the runs out. We have to play good defense and pitch well".
The Salukis lost all four to Evansville last year and have lost seven of the last eight meetings. SIU is 9-20 against the Purple Aces under Callahan, including an 0-1 mark in MVC Tournament play.
Southern Illinois plays a single game on Friday at 3 p.m., a doubleheader on Saturday at 12 p.m. and a single game at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Abe Martin Field.
