Illinois baseball concludes road stretch with series at Coastal Carolina
Photo courtesy of Illini Athletics
Right hand pitcher Joe Glassey throws a swift pitch on Saturday. The Illini end Coastal Carolina matches and prepare for home opener game against Indiana on Wednesday.
March 10, 2023
Illinois baseball (6-4) enters the final stretch of its early season road trip this weekend as they travel to Conway, South Carolina. There the Illini will play a three-game series against the perennial College World Series-contending Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (8-4).
The Illini enter the weekend after taking two out of three from the Sam Houston Bearkats; however, in the last game of that series, they laid an egg after giving up six runs late to lose it. Meanwhile, Coastal Carolina comes off a huge upset win over No. 5 Wake Forest, a team that clobbered Illinois during the first weekend of the season.
Head coach Dan Hartleb mentioned after the game that the team had a lot to work on going into this upcoming weekend.
“There’s a number of things we have to clean up this week,” Hartleb said. “We have to go control the running game, we have not done a good job of that, and some simple things.”
Hartleb also talked about winning and not being comfortable at any point in the season.
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“You’ve got to stack wins on top of each other,” Hartleb said. “Winning is hard, I don’t care who you’re playing or when you’re playing them.”
The Chanticleers provide a big challenge for the Illini pitchers, as they boast a team on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.002. As for the Illini pitching, the team has an earned run average of 6.22.
Senior outfielder Danny Doligale spoke about his vision for improvement so far this season.
“I think (what) we need to work on is keeping our composure and being ourselves,” Doligale said. “When we get sped up, we kind of lose our identity as players and it’s tough to perform at our best that way.”
As for the Illini hitters, the team’s OPS stands at .873, while the Chanticleers team ERA is 6.22. The Illini will have to step up in all facets of the game in order to pull off a series win in one of the tougher environments to play at Springs Brooks Stadium.
The first pitch is scheduled for 5 p.m. Game two is set for 1 p.m. on Saturday, and the series conclusion will start at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday. All times listed are in Central Standard Time.
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