The Illinois baseball team will kick off a five-game road trip starting this afternoon when the Illini travel to Charleston, Ill., for a meeting with the Eastern Illinois Panthers.

“Eastern is another Illinois school and we have some recruiting battles with them so it’s important to win these games,” junior third baseman Mike Rohde said. “All of these games are important coming down to the end of season for a possible at-large bid for the postseason.”

The Illini head into Charleston having won four straight against the Panthers, including an 18-11 win over Eastern Illinois last season at Illinois Field. Eastern Illinois’ last win over Illinois came on April 18, 2000 when the Panthers upset the Illini 1-0 in Charleston.

Illinois (20-17, 7-9 Big Ten) comes into today’s game off a 3-1 weekend against the Iowa Hawkeyes. The Illini took the first three games of the series against Iowa, before being destroyed by the Hawkeyes 17-3 in the finale Sunday.

“The first thing we have to do is forget about our last game, just understand they beat us and get back after it and get some confidence back,” Rohde said. “We need to come out like we did on Friday and Saturday and that’s all we can really do.”

But despite the beating Sunday, the Illini hope to regroup for today’s game and will send freshman pitcher Aaron Martin to the mound for his third start of the season.

Martin is 1-0 with a 3.95 ERA and has 19 strikeouts in 26 and 2/3 innings pitched this season for the Illini. In his last start, Martin threw three innings and gave up just two hits and no earned runs, but got a no decision in the Illini’s 8-7 loss at Bradley.

“Aaron has given us some quality starts during the midweek games,” head coach Dan Hartleb said. “I expect him to do the same thing he has been. Hopefully he can get us deep into the game and give us six innings or something like that.”

Eastern Illinois enters the series with an identical record to the Illini’s at 20-17. However, the Panthers have lost three of their last four games, including a 1-2 series against Samford University this past weekend in Birmingham, Ala.

The Panthers are lead by junior outfielder Mark Chagnon and junior infielder Erik Huber. Chagnon leads Eastern Illinois with a .407 batting average, while Huber leads the Panthers with 30 RBIs.

Today’s game will start at 3 p.m., which could fare well for the Illini. The Illini are six games over .500 in day games compared to three games under .500 in night games on the season.

“We go into every game to win,” Hartleb said. “I think we are a solid team when the right people are on the mound. I expect our guys to play hard but we need to continue to progress and we aren’t a team that can just walk on the field and things will just happen for us. We have to play intelligent and have to pitch well and play error free.”