Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Softball Travels To Evansville
04/22/2004 | 12:00:00 | Softball
April 22, 2004
By Lou Antoine
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. - Southern Illinois (34-11, 11-5 MVC) wraps up its MVC season series with a road trip to Evansville on Thursday. The Salukis, who swept Evansville in a doubleheader at West Stadium on April 7, will play a single game at 5 p.m. at Cooper Stadium.
The Salukis split a four-game road trip to Kansas, losing two of three to Wichita State before beating Kansas 5-3 in ten innings on Monday. The losses to WSU dropped SIU into a second place tie with Creighton, their weekend opponent. Evansville (32-14, 7-9 MVC) may sit seventh in the MVC standings, but the finale is important to SIU's first place aspirations, and The Purple Aces are a dangerous team.
"It's important because a win would give us a season sweep and send us into the weekend series with Creighton feeling good. Evansville is a better team than their MVC record shows. In conference play they've hit a stretch where they haven't hit much and they also had an injury to a pitcher. They will be like a wounded dog, so we're going to have to be ready and go over there and play well," said Kerri Blaylock, SIU head coach.
Despite SIU shutting out Evansville twice in the April 7 sweep (8-0 & 2-0), the Purple Aces have the ability to score runs in bunches.
"Hitting will be a big factor. We want to hold them down, because they're a team that hits well. They may not have been hitting well recently, but they're dangerous offensively. They started the year strong and can hurt you if you let them," added Blaylock.
SIU leads the all-time series 39-15 against Evansville, including an 8-7 mark under Blaylock against her alma mater.
The Southern Illinois game with Evansville will be scored via Gametracker on SIU's home page at www.siusalukis.com.
