Creighton eliminates Baseball from MVC Tournament

Thursday, May 26

Omaha, NE

12:30 PM

Southern Illinois University

41-14

Creighton

23-34

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	Runs R	Hits H	Errors E
Creighton	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	2	1	5	9	0
Southern Illinois	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2

05/26/2011 | 12:00:00 | Baseball

Box Score

May 26, 2011

By Jason Clay
SIUSalukis.com

Box Score

OMAHA, Neb. - Creighton pitcher Greg Hellhake held the Southern Illinois baseball team to two hits, as the Jays eliminated the Salukis from the 2011 State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Tournament with a 5-0 win on Thursday at TD Ameritrade Park.

Southern Illinois ends its season with a 23-34 record under interim head coach Ken Henderson.

"We had good kids and they did everything that we asked them to do," Henderson said. "We didn't always play great, but we played hard. I cannot fault our effort, even today we made some mistakes, but our effort was tremendous. We have great kids and they made it a good year.

"In terms of wins and losses it wasn't where we wanted it to be, but in terms of coaching them we couldn't ask for anything more."

SIU's two hits tied its season-low, which came in a 9-0 loss at Bradley on May 6. This was the fourth game this year that the Salukis were shutout.

Hellhake (4-4) threw the first complete game of his career in what was his 46th career start. He had five strikeouts against one walk and retired 16-straight to end the game. Coming into today Hellhake's average outing in his first 14 starts this year was just 4.0 innings.

"(Hellhake) just kept off speed and we didn't adjust," Henderson said. "If you don't adjust, he'll wear you out and that's what he did."

Top-seeded Creighton (41-14) scored two unconventional runs in the middle of the game off the fifth-seeded Salukis. The first was scored on a wild pitch when Bever was attempting to intentionally walk a batter and the second was an unearned run that was created by two Saluki errors on the same play.

The Jays then tacked on two runs in the eighth and one in the ninth to put the game away.

Saluki pitcher Andrew Bever (5-6) went 6.0 innings in his first career MVC Tournament start. He gave up five hits and two runs (one earned) while walking four batters and striking out three.

Chris Murphy led off the game with a double down the right-field line, but after that Hellhake didn't allow another hit until the fourth inning. Murphy ends his four-year career tied for third in school history with 48 doubles.

Brock Harding had SIU's second hit in the game, a two-out single in the fourth.