It has been a rough week for the U-N-I baseball team which has dropped consecutive games against Upper Iowa and Northern Illinois this week to fall below the 500-mark. They get a chance to right the ship on Friday night when they open a three game Missouri Valley Conference series against Evansville.
Panther coach Rick Heller says usually when things look the worst, there’s some good things around the corner. Heller says they played well, but come away with nothing to show for it.
His team has made a habit of stranding base runners as of late. They left 13 runners on base in a 7-6 loss to Northern Illinois on Wednesday night. Heller says the bottom half of the order has been struggling and leaving guys on base.
Evansville is 19-16 overall and off to a 4-5 start in the Missouri Valley Conference race. Last season he says he thought Evansville would win the league after sweeping his team. But Heller says there’s a lot of parity this year as the pitchers are dominant.
Heller says a good weekend would put them back into the thick of things. They’re at 2-4 in the Valley, but he says the rest of the league is jumbled up as well. The series will continue with single games on Saturday and Sunday.