The Illinois baseball team captured its second win in a row last night as the Illini defeated Illinois State in Bloomington, Ill., 8-3 behind red-shirt freshman pitcher Scott Shaw’s best outing of the season.

“It was just a good win overall for us,” junior third baseman Mike Rohde said. “The most important thing is we came in with the right attitude. We didn’t take them lightly and sometimes with these mid-week games there is a tendency to overlook teams on the schedule.”

The Illini didn’t waste any time getting on the board early. Illinois junior left fielder Ryan Snowden started the game off by doubling down the left field line and then scored on senior first baseman Dave Schultz’s RBI single into left. Two batters later Rohde doubled to right field to bring in Schultz and allow the Illini to grab an early 2-0 lead.

The Illini added to their lead in the third inning with bases-loaded singles by Rohde and sophomore catcher Lars Davis to take a 5-0 lead. Sophomore second baseman Ryan Hastings added another run for the Illini by driving in Rohde on a fielding error by Illinois State’s second baseman.

“We did a good job the first inning and jumped out and hit the ball well,” head coach Dan Hartleb said. “It was impressive the way we jumped out. We continued to swing the bats well throughout the game and put pressure on them.”

Illinois State fought back with three runs in the bottom of the third, but that was all the Redbirds would manage on this night.

In his seventh start of the season red-shirt freshman Scott Shaw shut the door on the Redbirds, throwing six innings and giving up just five hits and one earned-run to earn his second win of the season for the Illini.

“I would say that was probably my best all-around performance,” Shaw said. “It was the first time I’ve pitched in a while so I was just trying to go out and get a feel for things and everything worked out. I was hitting my spots and keeping the ball down, and threw all my pitches for strikes, and haven’t done that all year.”

Rohde, Davis and junior shortstop Shawn Roof led the way at the plate for the Illini. Rohde finished the game a perfect 3-3 at the plate with two RBI’s and a run scored, while Davis was 2-4 with three RBI’s and Roof had three hits and two runs scored for the Illini.

The 8-3 win put the Illini back over .500 at 17-16 overall and improved the team’s record to 2-1 this year against teams in the Missouri Valley Conference. The win also snapped Illinois’ recent struggles against Illinois State. Before last night’s game the Illini were just 1-4 against the Redbirds.

“Other than Northwestern, Illinois State is probably the biggest game we play against a team from Illinois,” Shaw said. “It’s comforting to know you have bragging rights especially since we have had some hard luck against them the last few years.”