Illinois (18-11, 7-5) is on a roll after winning its last four games, including a weekend series sweep over Maryland (14-18, 3-9). This is the team’s first sweep this season.
The series win marks the first time Illinois has beaten Maryland since the 2018 campaign.
This is also the program’s first sweep since last year’s regular-season finale against Purdue.
Pitching finding itself?
Illinois has not been good on the mound throughout the season. It’s ranked No. 14 in the Big Ten in ERA (6.28). Despite this, the team only allowed seven runs over the entire weekend.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
This came against a solid-hitting Maryland team that is sitting at No. 7 in batting average and No. 6 in RBIs. A lot of Maryland’s production comes from senior catcher Alex Calarco who has 47 RBI on the year on a .306 batting average.
Despite this, Illinois was able to shut down Calarco, who went 1-11 over the weekend.
The most impressive performance on the mound came from sophomore pitcher Regan Hall. The New Mexico native went 6.1 innings and only allowed four hits while giving up zero runs.
Hall pitched the series finale that went only seven innings and saw Illinois win 11-0.
“(Hall) had great command from the start,” said head coach Dan Hartleb. “He strikes out the first hitter just locating fastballs and then 1-2-3 innings and our offense gets going right away.”
Offensive explosion
The weekend saw Illinois score 33 runs. Over the last four games, they’ve had 41. The team had back-to-back games that ended via run rule. The first run-rule win came in game two of Saturday’s double header, which ended after eight innings.
The opening game was the most competitive the series ever got. Illinois held onto a one-run lead going into the eighth inning before a double by redshirt sophomore infielder Kyle Schupmann cleared the bases, bringing in two runners for Illinois.
After the game Saturday morning, Illinois was off to the races with the amount of runs it scored. Maryland is No. 15 in the conference in ERA, and Illinois took advantage of that.
“There’s times that we’ve gotten ourselves out to play, but this group really competes,” Hartleb said. “You know, we talk about getting better every day; that’s what we’ll talk about after this game.”
Mother Nature has her say
When playing baseball in the state of Illinois, you have to take what you can get. Before being turned into a two-day set, this was originally supposed to be a three-day series.
Illinois had to move game one to 9 a.m. Saturday for a double-header after the original Friday 6 p.m. first pitch was washed out. This scheduling affected the Saturday night game as well as the first pitch for game two, which did not begin until 7 p.m.
Next up
Illinois will head to Bloomington-Normal on Tuesday for a rematch against Illinois State (14-16). First pitch will be at 5 p.m. and the game will be live on ESPN+.
@EBrewer1172
