March 30, 2006
NORMAL, Ill. -
The Missouri Valley Conference season opened up successfully for the Illinois State baseball team, as the Redbirds won two of three games against the Northern Iowa Panthers to make their conference record 2-1. On Friday, the `Birds (7-14, 2-1) travel to Terre Haute, Ind., to face the Indiana State Sycamores (10-10, 1-2) for their second MVC series of the season and will look to build on the momentum gained by Wednesday's 7-3 defeat of Iowa on the road.
Illinois State has won three of its last four games and will be facing an Indiana State squad that has lost four straight games. However, ISU head coach Jim Brownlee is not worried about momentum or the other team at this point, but is instead focusing on how his team will prepare for the weekend road series.
"We always try to not focus that much on what the other team is doing, but instead focus on the job we are doing on the field," said Brownlee. "After the past several games, I think our players are finally getting a better idea of how they need to prepare during the week in order to win on game day. That showed in our win against Iowa, and now we need to continue that trend as we resume conference play."
The Redbirds have been playing much better after opening the season 2-11, and Brownlee attributes it to timely hitting and improved pitching.
"We started doing some things in the past few games that we haven't been doing earlier in the season," said Brownlee. "We are getting timely hits and playing solid defensively in the field. It seems that the high-level of competition that we faced in the non-conference might have hurt the players' confidence a bit, but that seems to be changing for the better as well."
Junior Kitt Kopach (1-3, 2.30 ERA) will start the 7 p.m. contest on Friday night against the Sycamores, looking to improve on his team-low ERA. Freshmen Ian Berger and Jim Sajewich will make their regularly scheduled starts on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, and will try to continue the improved ISU pitching of late.
"Our philosophy on the mound is to throw strikes early in the count and stay in the zone as much as possible," said Brownlee. "The pitchers have rebounded and have been doing that lately, and the group we have on the mound this weekend seems to have developed a good rhythm out there. Hopefully that will result in another conference series win for us."
All of this weekend's games at Sycamore Field can be followed on the Internet through GameTracker technology on the official website of Illinois State athletics, GoRedbirds.com. In addition, Saturday and Sunday's games can be listened to live through the Multimedia link at GoRedbirds.com or on WJBC2.com, with Nick Reeser calling the action.
