VINCENNES, Ind. – The Vincennes University Trailblazer baseball team opened the doors at Jerry Blemker Field for the first time this spring and ended up falling to Frontier College 8-1.

The home season opener got off to a pretty good start after a clean three-up, three-down top of the first, the Trailblazers got their first two hitters on base with a leadoff single by sophomore Ethan Burdette (Linton, Ind.) and a walk by sophomore Colin Long (Evansville, Ind.).

Burdette would end up stranded at third as the Trailblazers were unable to capitalize on this early success.

Frontier did take advantage however after their first two batters in the second walked and would later come around to score giving the Bobcats a 2-0 early lead.

VU would get a run back in the fourth after a leadoff double by sophomore Kaden Elliott (New Albany, Ind.). Elliott would come around to score on a ground out by sophomore Dale Coy (Evansville, Ind.).

Frontier would get this run back immediately in the fifth and extend their lead with a big three-run seventh to take a 6-1 lead.

The Bobcats would add on a pair of insurance runs in the ninth as Frontier closed out the 8-1 victory over the Trailblazers.

“The storyline of the game is that Frontier College was 3-7 with runners in scoring position and we were 0-10 with runners in scoring position,” VU Baseball Coach Chris Barney said. “The turning point in the game was after the bottom of the first. We started with a single and a walk and could not score. The top of the second, Logan Medsker walked the first two hitters and both scored on fielder’s choices.”

VU was led off on the mound by freshman Logan Medsker (Marshall, Ill.) who threw three innings, allowing two runs on two hits and striking out one.

Medsker then turned it over to freshman Aaron Fenn (Fort Wayne, Ind.) who threw three innings, allowing one run on one hit and striking out two.

Sophomore Eli Steimel (Sullivan, Ind.) came in to clean up the seventh inning and retired the only batter he faced.

Freshman Jack Robinson (Mooresville, Ind.) pitched the eighth, allowing a walk and striking out two and freshman Jace Parnin (Fort Wayne, Ind.) came in to close out the ninth allowing a hit and a walk and striking out two.

The Trailblazers will now turn their attentions to a very busy weekend at Jerry Blemker Field. VU will start the weekend Saturday, Feb. 18 when Vincennes takes on South Suburban College at 10:30 a.m. eastern. The busy Saturday at VU will conclude with the Trailblazers taking on Ancilla College at 6 p.m. eastern.

Vincennes will then turn around and play Sunday, Feb. 19 against an opponent to be announced later. First pitch Sunday is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. easter

VINCENNES, Ind. – The No. 12-ranked Vincennes University Trailblazers are beginning to round into postseason shape as the 2022-23 regular season is quickly winding down, with the Trailblazers picking up another strong 86-60 win over Lincoln Trail Wednesday night.

Vincennes set the tone early Wednesday night, quickly jumping out to a 17-6 lead before extending their lead to 30-11 midway through the first half of play.

The Statesmen looked to answer back, but were only able to cut the margin down to 16 as VU rode into the halftime break holding a 43-25 lead.

The Trailblazers wanted to put the game away early in the second half, with VU using a 9-0 scoring run to grow their lead to 52-28 early in the second half.

Midway through the second half it appeared that VU had taken their foot off the gas too early as Lincoln Trail came storming back to cut the VU lead to 70-51.

Vincennes would regroup and finish out the game strong, not allowing Lincoln Trail to put together a late scoring run as VU came away with the big 86-60 home win over the Statesmen.

“Basketball is hard,” VU Hall of Fame Head Coach Todd Franklin said. “Lincoln Trail was a team that got votes in the Top-20 at the start of the season and they have nobody hurt. They are a bunch of older guys that have been around for a while. So, it’s not always going to be pretty. But beating those guys by 26, that’s about as pretty as it’s going to get.”

“We lost focus, got a little tired and winded, which we could have played through but when you are up 25 of 26 and they get up after you, we just lost a little bit of focus,” Franklin added. “We’ve got to do better because we have got to put 40 minutes together. But I thought tonight was a good win. If we would have hit some shots earlier, because they were trying to sell out and stop the post and it took us a little while to get some confidence to shoot it on the back end. But once we did that, it went from being up nine or 10 to up 19 or 20 and it wasn’t necessarily from playing better, it just held there because we weren’t busting the shot.”

“Play-wise on the floor at that point we were kind of controlling the game at that point,” Franklin said. “They couldn’t score and we were getting good shots. We didn’t have a problem getting a good shot, we just weren’t confident enough to hit the shot that we were getting. I thought we turned the defense up a little bit at the end of the first half. I thought we got some turnovers that ended up being buckets out of playing solid defense and not gambling.”

“Then I thought we handled the first part of the second half,” Franklin added. “Other than Michael, who did a pretty good job all night, but he had a couple of times where he went to sleep on Wickliffe. Mike’s used to guarding in the post and he did, but he had two mental breakdowns and Wickliffe ended up with two threes. That was about the only six points they had in the first five minutes of the second half.”

“We came out and wanted to make sure that this goes up instead of down and we went from 19 to up 25 or 26,” Franklin said. “I thought we came out and handled that and then essentially it’s over once you come out and have that start to the second half. It was good. Good for us. I think we are trying to move forward. Our deal right now is to win a championship and we are not talking about a little championship, we’re talking about the whole thing and I think we can. But I thought we played well tonight. We shot a good percentage even though we weren’t great from three. Turnovers were really not very high except for that one bad spurt. We ended up with 11, it would have been down to about six or seven if not for that one stretch when we got tired and slung the ball around. The majority of the game was pretty clean on our part. ”

“We’ve got to keep getting better and we’ve got to play with confidence,” Franklin added. “At times we are. But it’s just the accountability of not taking plays off. We are pushing that because we have to be able to put that 40 minutes of our best ball out there. But we are getting closer. We are a really good team and we need to have a really good week of work because we are getting ready to go into a good cluster of games. SWIC on Wednesday, at Wabash on Saturday and Olney here Tuesday, so it’s like a mini tournament, before the tournament. That’s how we are looking at it. We are going to prepare for these last three games like we are preparing for the District Tournament and in many ways for us it is. We are getting closer and closer to playing our way into Hutch. We are getting really close to punching that ticket and if we can get these next three wins, it’s going to be tough to keep us out at that point.”

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The University of Evansville women’s swimming team’s relay squads had strong showings in the 200-Yard Medley Relay and 800-Yard Freestyle Relay on Wednesday in the first day of action at the 2023 Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships in Iowa City, Iowa.

UE’s 200 Medley Relay squad of junior Iryna Tsesiul (Minsk, Belarus), senior Sage Moore (Lexington, Ohio/Lexington), sophomore Sveva Brugnoli (Rome, Italy) and senior Allison McDonald (Cape Girardeau, Mo./Central) won their heat with a time of 1:43.70.  The time was just over a second off of the UE school record of 1:42.62 set at last year’s Valley Championships.

In the 800 Free Relay, the quartet of seniors Sarah Jahns (Lilburn, Ga./Parkview), Maya Cunningham (Yakima, Wash./Eisenhower) and Sonsoles Aguayo (Jerez, Spain) and sophomore Mari Müller (Zurich, Switzerland) teamed up to post a time of 7:38.14, which was over 15 seconds faster than UE’s seed time for the meet.  The 15.34 second improvement by UE was the largest of any of the 800 Free Relay teams at the Valley Championships.

“Overall, I thought it was a good start to the conference championships,” said UE head coach Stuart Wilson.  “We had some people post some good splits, and it was good to be able to get back to racing after a month of training.  There were a lot of positives to take from tonight into the rest of the conference meet.”

The MVC Championships will continue on Thursday with preliminary swims in the 500-Yard Freestyle, the 200 IM, the 50-Yard Freestyle, and the one-meter diving competition taking place beginning at 10:30 a.m. central time.  Event finals for all of those events, as well as the 200-Yard Freestyle Relay competition will take place on Thursday night beginning at 6 p.m.  Fans can watch the action live at www.youtube.com/@UNIAthleticsPanthers/streams, while also following along on the Meet Mobile App for live results

UE travels to Murray State on Saturday

NASHVILLE – Belmont scored the first six points of the game and would pull away to defeat the University of Evansville men’s basketball team by a final score of 95-63 on Wednesday night inside Curb Event Center.

Marvin Coleman II led the Purple Aces with 15 points.  He was 6-for-16 from the field and recorded five rebounds and four assists.  Continuing his hot shooting from outside, Gage Bobe was 4-of-6 on his way to 14 points.  Preston Phillips added a career-high 11 points to go with seven boards.  Five Bruins reached double figures led by Ben Sheppard’s 16 tallies.

Hitting their first two outside attempts, the Bruins took a 6-0 lead before recording the first nine points of the game.  After opening the game 0-for-5 from the field with a turnover, Marvin Coleman II got the Aces on the board with a turnaround jumper.

Belmont took its first double digit lead at 14-3 with Gage Bobe countering with the first triple for UE to cut the gap back to eight.  Five of the first nine outside tries found the bottom of the net as the lead grew to 20-8.  With 6:18 remaining in the half, a free throw solidified a 33-15 advantage for the Bruins.

Over the next two minutes, Evansville made its move, scoring nine in a row.  Antoine Smith Jr. connected on two free throws with the defense taking over on the next two possessions.  Coleman and Yacine Toumi both turned a turnover into a made basket to get within 12.  Smith completed the run with three free throws to get his squad within nine points (33-24) with 4:19 remaining in the half.

Finishing the period on a 13-4 run, the Bruins reestablished their 18-point lead as the game entered the break.  Down the stretch, Belmont drained its final five attempts while Evansville missed its last six to make it a 46-28 score.

Evansville’s shooting woes continued in the second half with the Aces missing their first seven attempts with Belmont tacking five more points to their lead.  Kenny Strawbridge Jr. converted a 3-point play to temporarily halt the stretch before Belmont continued to add to the lead.  Their advantage reached 76-40 with 9:08 left in the game with Evansville closing to within 29 inside of the 7-minute mark.

Things fluctuated from there with Belmont taking the contest by a final score of 95-63.  The Bruins shot 56.9% while UE completed the game at 31.4%.

With the season entering its final weeks, UE remains on the road at Murray State on Saturday for a 3:30 p.m. contest.

VINCENNES, Ind. – The Vincennes University Lady Trailblazers once again partnered with the Kay Yow Cancer Fund for the 10th Play 4 Kay game at VU.

The day began with VU Director of Housing and Residential Life Brad Wolfe presenting VU Hall of Fame Head Coach Harry Meeks with a $300 check to be donated to the Kay Yow Cancer Fund.

Once the game started, the Lady Trailblazers took care of business as VU broke free in the second quarter and pulled away in the third quarter to come away with a big 78-51 win over the Lady Statesmen.

The game started as a slow, back-and-forth battle with neither team able to break free.

Lincoln Trail would even the game at 16-16 with a last second shot to end the first quarter after the two teams had traded baskets for most of the first 10 minutes of play.

VU fell behind early in the second quarter but would completely take the game over with a 17-2 scoring run to close out the first half of play.

The Lady Trailblazers headed into the locker room holding a 36-22 lead over Lincoln Trail.

Vincennes picked up right where they left off to start the second half of play, with the Lady Trailblazers using a 19-2 scoring run to grab a 55-25 lead over the Lady Statesmen.

VU would hold on to this lead, heading into the fourth quarter ahead 63-35and continued to add on midway through the fourth quarter.

Vincennes would grab their largest lead of the game at 72-39 before the Lady Statesmen closed out the game strong by scoring the last six points to cut the final margin to 27.

The Lady Trailblazers cruised late to their 11th Region 24 win of the season and 18th win overall by the final score of 78-51.

VU was led offensively by sophomore guards Chanice Willis (Champaign, Ill.) and Cherrelle Newsom (Indianapolis, Ind.).

Willis came off the bench to add a major presence on the defensive end of the floor and was able to turn her defense into offense several times throughout the game. Willis ended with a game-high 20 points, five steals and four rebounds.

Newsom continues to show why she is the VU All-Time leading three-point shooter, connecting with four shots from long range on her way to 19 points on the night.

Freshman Elikya Baseyila (Paris, France) continues to dominate her opponents on the low block, ending up with her 10th double-double of the season with 14 points and 15 rebounds. Baseyila also led the Trailblazers with a pair of blocks.

Freshmen Brie Miller (Greencastle, Ind.) and Maycee Lange (Vincennes, Ind.) also contributed at both ends of the floor, with the pair each recording seven points, with Miller adding eight rebounds and Lange finishing with four steals.

The Lady Trailblazers will hit the road this weekend as they look to continue this five-game winning streak on Saturday, Feb. 18 when VU travels to Ina, Ill. to take on Rend Lake College. Tip-off time Saturday is set for 2 p.m. eastern.

VU defeated the Lady Warriors 93-75 at the P.E. Complex earlier this season behind an outstanding 27 points by Cherrelle Newsom.