GAME DAY LINKS --
McKENDREE at SOUTHERN INDIANA -- Friday/Saturday, April 14-15, 2017
USI Baseball Field -- Evansville, Ind.
Doubleheaders Each Day Begin at Noon

WATCH LIVE (USI Broadcast)
LIVE STATS
McKENDREE SEASON STATISTICS
SOUTHERN INDIANA SEASON STATISTICS

(LEBANON, Ill., April 12)--The McKendree University baseball team will look to keep its winning ways intact during its trip to Evansville, Ind., this weekend for a four-game Great Lakes Valley Conference series at the University of Southern Indiana. The Bearcats and Screaming Eagles will square off in doubleheaders each day set to begin at noon. 

McKendree is riding the momentum from arguably the Bearcats' two biggest victories of the 2017 season. Last Sunday, in the final game of its four-game set at the University of Indianapolis, McKendree exploded for an NCAA Division II-era record 28 runs and 27 hits en route to a 28-5 triumph over the then-No. 10 Greyhounds. Just over 48 hours later on Tuesday, the Bearcats rode the strength of a four-run fifth inning to upend NCAA Division I Saint Louis University on its home turf, 5-2. It marked the first win for McKendree over the BIllikens since the 1986 season. 

Thanks to those two wins, McKendree has pushed its season record to 11-21, while the team sits at 1-11 in GLVC play. The Bearcats enter the weekend hitting .268 as a team, which is good for 14th among the 16 GLVC squads. Isaac Fisher (Washington, IL/Washington) leads McKendree in hitting at .348 while pacing the team with 32 hits and three triples. Hayden Bodine (Washington, IL/Washington), who checks in at .316, has a team-leading nine doubles and 19 runs batted in. Ryan Cates (Anderson, IN/Yorktown) and Brad Groleau (Peru, IL/St. Bede Academy) are each batting .300 entering the weekend, giving the Bearcats four regulars in the lineup who are hitting .300 or above. 

Matt Wasche (Kansas City, MO/Rockhurst) collected the victory on the mound at Saint Louis on Tuesday, which pushed his season record to 3-0. Wasche tied Nick Yung (Smithton, IL/Freeburg) for the team lead in wins. Matt Henning (Wichita, KS/Bishop Carroll) tossed the final two innings and survived a ninth-inning rally from Saint Louis to record his team-leading fourth save of 2017. Henning also leads the McKendree pitching staff with a 2.41 earned-run average. 

The trip to Southern Indiana wraps up a nine-game road trip for McKendree. The Bearcats will return to Hypes Field on Tuesday for a non-conference match-up against the University of Missouri-St. Louis. First pitch is set for 1 p.m. Following the UMSL game, McKendree will host Saint Joseph's College for the final time in a four-game GLVC series next Saturday and Sunday, April 22-23. 

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN INDIANA
The Screaming Eagles have overcome a slow start to their 2017 season and sit above the .500 mark at 17-14 overall. Southern Indiana is currently tied with the University of Illinois Springfield atop the GLVC East Division standings at 9-3. Head coach Tracy Archuleta's squad has won its last five games and is 8-2 over its last 10 outings. The Screaming Eagles swept a four-game series at home last weekend from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside before notching a 5-3 road win on Tuesday at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. 

Coming into the weekend, USI is batting .262 as a team, which ranks last of the 16 GLVC schools. However, the Screaming Eagles are getting things done on the mound as their pitching staff has posted the lowest ERA in the conference at 3.39. Lucas Barnett leads the USI pitching staff with a perfect 4-0 record on the year and is second on the team with 32 strikeouts in 42 1/3 innings of work. Colin Nowak and Kyle Griffin have each posted three wins in the starting rotation, while Justin Watts has gone 3-0 out of the bullpen with a team-best five saves in 14 appearances. 

In 2016, USI took three of four games against McKendree in a series played at Hypes Field. The lone Bearcats' win came in game two of the weekend, 9-8, on a walk-off home run by Ryan Cates (Anderson, IN/Yorktown) in the bottom of the ninth inning.