Issue date: 3/24/08 Section: Sports

To check out our photo gallery from the weekend's baseball games, click here!


The Eastern baseball team started the season 0-6 after being swept in consecutive three-game series by Southeastern Louisiana and Northwestern State.

The Panthers then lost the first game of the Florida All-Star Challenge to Western Michigan by 12 runs (13-5) on March 8.

Eastern has since won eight of its last 10 games including three straight in Florida against Vermont, Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne and Bucknell and three more this weekend against Ohio Valley Conference foe Morehead State.

Junior centerfielder Brett Nommensen said the contributions from the young players and the transfers has helped lead to Eastern's current success.

"(Starting undefeated in OVC play) is huge especially from how we started off 0-7," Nommensen said. "It just shows that we're a whole different team from last year."

The three OVC wins put Eastern atop the conference in a tie with Samford, who swept Tennessee-Martin.

Sophomore catcher Richie Derbak had just one word for the Panthers' early-season OVC sweep:

Awesome.

Winning the first three games will give Eastern a solid foundation of success on which to build a successful conference season. It's the only thing that matters because it's conference play. Only the top six teams in the OVC make the tournament, and the winner gets the automatic berth into the College World Series.

A three-game sweep against an OVC opponent in late March might not seem like much, but the three wins against Morehead State could define Eastern's conference season.

"It should get the ball rolling, and we should have nice confidence how to keep on going knowing that we can win," said freshman third baseman Sean Estand.

The Panthers own the Eagles. Eastern holds a 38-4 series advantage against the Eagles.

It showed this weekend as Eastern outscored Morehead State 23-5 and held the Eagles to just 15 hits.

And the Panthers' domination in the first weekend of OVC play started on the pitching mound.

Starting pitchers Tristan Facer, Josh Mueller and Mike Hoekstra combined to give up just 11 hits, 5 runs and six walks. The three starters also had 20 strikeouts and held Morehead State to a .170 batting average.

But the success didn't stop with the starters. Senior right-hander Tyler Brandon pitched three and two-thirds innings in relief of Facer and gave up just three hits and no runs while striking out four.

"What can you say about TB there," said Eastern head coach Jim Schmitz. "He gave us (four) innings. That's what we told him his role was. We've got young guys to start, but a pretty experienced guy at the end in TB, that's kind of nice."

But the Panthers success didn't end at the mound. Eastern's hitters also had success at the plate.

The Panthers scored 23 runs on 30 hits and drew 10 walks against the Eagles. The majority of those hits and runs came in the third game of the season (18 hits, 16 runs).

"We knew we had to come out strong right away," said sophomore left fielder Curt Restko. "I knew they'd be fired up. They didn't want to get swept. We knew we had to just put runs right up the first couple innings, and we did."

Eastern lit up the scoreboard this weekend against Morehead State, but the Panthers will have to continue to get strong pitching from its young hurlers and more offensive production from its scrappy hitters to continue having success in the OVC.



Scott Richey can be reached at 581-7944 or at srrichey@eiu.edu.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools

The Daily Eastern News encourages on-topic, civil discussion on its articles posted online. It is our policy not to screen comments before they are posted or edit them after they are posted. However, we reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic, malicious, libelous or include excessive foul language. The DEN also reserves the right to turn off all comments on any story it deems necessary.

Comments violating copyright law will also be removed.

Users who repeatedly violate this policy will be banned from commenting.

If you have any questions on our comment policy or wish to report a comment that you feel violates these standards, please e-mail a link to the article to our Online Editor at DENNews.com@gmail.com.