Illinois Baseball Report

The Big Ten Tournament banner including Illinois’ Brandon Wikoff
As always, I had a great time at the Big Ten Tournament.  Win or lose, it’s a culmination of everything that the Illinois team has worked so hard for all season.  They’ve exceeded everyone else’s expectations this season and each one of them should be proud.
The paid [...]

Filed under: 2009 Big Ten Tournament on May 24th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Michigan State made a good effort in the first game of Day 2 of the Big Ten Baseball Tournament but Purdue simply outscored. them.
Purdue actually scored in every inning except the seventh defeating the the Spartans 12-9.  The Boilermakers had a 7-2 lead in the going into top of the fifth but Seth Williams two-run [...]

Filed under: 2009 Big Ten Tournament on May 22nd, 2009 | Leave a Comment! »

The linescore pretty much says it all
After spotting Michigan State four runs on an Eric Roof grand slam in the 3rd inning, Illinois came back like they were possessed scoring sixteen unanswered runs.  MSU managed to put one more across for the final tally of 16-5.

Take away the grand slam and you could say starter [...]

Filed under: 2009 Big Ten Tournament, Game Recaps on May 20th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

MSU fan Tom Tomkins posted some Spartan photos from last weekend’s series against Northwestern on his blog, Oak Openings and Observations. 
It looks like we played MSU at just about the right time.  After we swept them, they mightily defeated Central Michigan 20-3.  The Roof Brothers (brothers of former Illinois SS Shawn) had an incredible [...]

Filed under: Big Ten on April 8th, 2009 | Leave a Comment! »

Snowy day
We got started early today at 11am because of the re-scheduled game from yesterday’s rained out affair.  So today instead of rain, we got snow.  Granted it wasn’t a blizzard or anything but dang, it was cold.  Towards the end of Game One, the snow stopped.  The sun even popped out for a bit [...]

Filed under: Game Recaps, Uncategorized on March 29th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

It was cold and breezy at Illinois Field last night but that didn’t stop the hot bats of the Illini as they defeated Michigan State in their Big Ten opener by the score of 10-3.

Illini starter Lee Zerrusen
When Illinois scored a deuce in the first, MSU came back in the second with a pair [...]

Filed under: Game Recaps on March 28th, 2009 | Leave a Comment! »

The weekend is almost here.  THE weekend is almost here!  The weekend when Big Ten teams face off against each other and it really counts. 
For the #25 (yes, we’re still ranked) Illini, they face the Spartans of Michigan State.  If we can avoid the weather bug that we have avoided so well this year, [...]

Filed under: Game Previews on March 26th, 2009 | Leave a Comment! »

Last year at about this time, I corresponded with an Michigan State baseball fan named Tom Tompkins.  He was nice enough to write a bit about the 2008 Illinois-MSU series that was happening in East Lansing.
Well, the 2009 MSU-Illinois series is almost upon us and Tom dropped me an email.  He tells me that [...]

Filed under: Feature on March 24th, 2009 | Leave a Comment! »

No game on Sunday between Illinois and Ohio State.  Rain washed away any chance of the Illini to tie Ohio State for the weekend.  As frustrating as that probably is, Ohio State had the momentum after their amazing comeback in Game 2 on Saturday (they scored 10 runs in the bottom of the fifth after [...]

Filed under: Analysis on May 12th, 2008 | Leave a Comment! »

Tom Tompkins has a short report from Lansing.
Your guys broke our hearts in the 1st game with those 4 runs in the final inning. It was fairly cold and windy, and we had a lengthy rain delay between games. We got great pitching from two freshman and a winning hit by Eric Roof in [...]

Filed under: Game Recaps on March 30th, 2008 | Leave a Comment! »