The Drake softball team will be at home on Saturday to open a three game Missouri Valley Conference series with Illinois State. The Bulldogs are in second in the Valley race with as 7-3 record.

Drake coach Rich Calvert says they’ve lost a couple of tough games he thought they would pull out, and he says the next three series will determine how they do the rest of the way. The Bulldogs will play their next eight games on the road but Calvert says that does not put added pressure on this weekend.

“To this point, we’ve played better on the road than we have at home, for whatever reason,” Calvert says. He says teams sometimes focus better on the road than home, and he says there’s probably a lot of reasons for that.

The teams will play a doubleheader on Saturday and a single game on Sunday.