 After battling to a 2-1 series victory over Wichita State last weekend and a 2-1 thriller over Murray State on Tuesday, the University of Evansville baseball team will be hoping to keep things rolling this weekend as the Purple Aces will welcome in Bradley for the second weekend of Missouri Valley Conference play.
The Aces (18-13) are currently riding a three-game winning streak, thanks in part to some impressive pitching performances from freshman starters. Brandon Gomer, Alex Weigand and Austin Allinger have each picked up the victory over the last three games, and overall, Aces freshmen have tossed nearly 45% of the UE’s 269 innings on the mound.
This weekend, both Gomer and Weigand as well as junior hurler Patrick Schnieders are slated to carry the starting load for the Aces once again. Schnieders, saw his streak of quality starts upended in last Friday’s loss to the Shockers, but he will still enter the weekend as the statistical leader among the three with a 3-2 record and a 2.82 earned run average over a team leading 44.2 innings.
Gomer, on the other hand, picked up his first collegiate win after holding WSU to just four hits and a pair of runs in Saturday’s contest, and Weigand struck out a career-best seven hitters in six innings of work a day later. The duo has a combined 4-4 record on the season.
At the plate, the Aces line-up has maintained its torrid power pace, highlighted by the heavy-hitting trio of Jonathan Ramon, Trey Hair and Boomer Synek. Ramon, who has already logged the most home runs for a UE hitter in a season since 2010, leads the team with nine round-trippers to go along with his .308 average. Hair, a junior college transfer out of Fort Scott Community College, is the top hitter in the MVC with a .417 mark at the plate with 14 doubles and five homers, and Synek, who hit Tuesday’s ninth-inning game-winning homer at Murray State, is a .320 hitter with a team-leading 34 runs batted in.
Overall, the Aces are hitting .287 this season with 32 homers, which stands as the most for any UE team since 2010, which was the year before the NCAA introduced its new bat standards.
Meanwhile, the Braves enter the weekend looking to repeat some of the success of a week ago against Missouri State. BU is 15-11 this season, but facing one of the nation’s most powerful line-ups, the team was able shut down the Bears for a 2-1 victory before Sunday’s rubber game was called off due to inclement weather. Earlier this week, BU dropped a 5-1 decision at Northwestern.
First pitch on Friday is set for 6 p.m., and the games on Saturday and Sunday are slated to begin at 2 p.m. and 1 p.m., respectively.
NOTES: With 15 career saves, Aces closer Brent Jurceka is now tied for fifth all-time in UE history, equaling former Aces Matt Brinkmann and Sam Johns … Since 1978, UE is 49-37 against Bradley … The Aces are also 221-197 against schools that hail from the state of Illinois over that time span, including 4-1 this season … Last year, the Braves picked up the first two wins of the series in Peoria before the Aces left town with a 10-0 seven-inning win on the final day… In 2014, the last time BU paid a visit to Evansville, the Aces won all three games by a combined 22-8 score.
