The Illinois baseball team will take its show on the road for its final Big Ten series away from Illinois Field this season.

The Illini will play their final Big Ten regular season road games this weekend against Michigan and will look to get out of their recent slump in Big Ten games.

While the Illini are 6-0 in their non-conference mid-week games since April 14, Illinois is just 2-7 in the Big Ten and have lost its last two Big Ten series. The Illini have still not recorded a Big Ten series win this season and getting a series win over the Wolverines will not be an easy task.

Michigan has lost just one conference game this season and is atop the Big Ten standings with a 15-1 record. The Wolverines’ only conference loss this season came at the hands of Purdue on April 20. Since then Michigan has reeled off seven straight conference wins and are now ranked 13th in the nation.

“It will be like going into the lions’ den,” junior second baseman Ryan Hastings said. “We are going to have to go in there and battle and hopefully come out with two or three wins.”

The Illini will hope to get off to good start in the series and will send its hottest starting pitcher, sophomore Tanner Roark, to the mound in the series opening game on Friday night.

Coming into the series the Illini are a perfect 5-0 in series opening games, in large part to Roark’s pitching. Roark is 4-0 in Big Ten games and has won three consecutive Friday night games for the Illini in the Big Ten.

“Hopefully we’ll get another good start from Tanner and can set the tone and gain some momentum for the weekend,” senior first baseman Mike Rohde said. “They’re the top team in the Big Ten so it will be important for us to get a couple of wins. We know we’re better than this and hopefully with three weekends left we’ll peak towards the end.”

Illinois comes into the game on a roll at the plate. In their two mid-week games on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Illini scored a total of 29 runs on 31 hits, 12 of which were extra-base hits.

“We have a chance to put ourselves in a great position for the conference tournament by going in and winning a couple of games,” head coach Dan Hartleb said.

“We have nothing to lose and we have a great opportunity to go out and show people around the country that we have a quality ball club,” he said.