Peters' collects three hits in Salukis' doubleheader split

Okotoks Dawgs alum Tristan Peters (Winkler, Man.) had three hits for the Illinois State Salukis to help them split a doubleheader with Dallas Baptist. Photo: Illinois State Athletics

May 21, 2021

By John T. Lock

Illinois State Athletics

CARBONDALE, Ill. - The SIU baseball team split a doubleheader with Dallas Baptist on Friday afternoon at Itchy Jones Stadium.

The Salukis clinched a top-four seed in the upcoming Missouri Valley Conference Tournament. DBU won the opening game, 3-0, and SIU won the nightcap, 9-8.

The top-four seed guarantees that SIU will avoid Tuesday's single-elimination play-in games and advances automatically into the double-elimination portion of the tournament, which starts on Wednesday.

"I think it's a testament to our team to go down 3-0 in the second game, when you're already down 2-0 in the series, and hang in there as a group and continue to chip away," SIU head coach Lance Rhodes said. "We evened it up and they came back to take a 5-3 lead. It would have been easy for our guys to say, 'It's just not our weekend.' But they continued to battle and battle and battle. To find a way to win it was huge."

SIU (37-18, 14-13 MVC), which had only been shut out once all year, was shut out in each of the first two games of the series. After DBU (33-14, 18-5 MVC) won the opener in shutout fashion on Thursday night, the Patriots got a gem from MVC Pitcher of the Year candidate Rhett Kouba in the opener of today's doubleheader. Kouba pitched a complete-game shutout in the seven-inning game, outdueling SIU starter Ben Chapman, who was outstanding in his own right, allowing just three runs on four hits for SIU.

Tristan Peters (Winkler, Man.) was 1-for-3 in the contest.

In the second game, DBU jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning, scoring all three runs with two outs. Finally, SIU's vaunted offence got rolling. The Salukis got a run back in the third and two more runs in the fourth to tie the game, 3-3.

Bubba Hall was outstanding for SIU out of the bullpen in the second game, but his appearance started with a defensive mistake. Hall entered into a two-on, no-out jam in the fifth inning and threw a bunted ball away, which set up two DBU runs to give the Patriots a 5-3 lead. After that, though, Hall was phenomenal, pitching scoreless innings in the sixth, seventh, and eighth while Southern's offence went back to work.

"He's starting to be consistent with his performances out of the pen," Rhodes said of Hall. "That's five or six really good outings in a row out of the pen. He has electric stuff. When you're throwing the changeup and breaking ball for strikes, and you're in the mid-90s, you have a chance to do what he's doing, which is punching out a lot of people and getting a lot of weak contact."

SIU took advantage of a DBU error to tie the game with two runs in the sixth inning. Evan Martin started the scoring chance with a leadoff double, and Grey Epps followed with a walk. Both runs scored after a throwing error by DBU's shortstop to tie the game, 5-5.

The Salukis won the game against DBU's bullpen ace, Peyton Sherlin, who had allowed just 13 hits in 27 innings on the season. Opponents were hitting just .141 against Sherlin, who had not allowed more than two hits in any appearance all season long. Grey Epps started SIU's rally with a swinging bunt with one out, and he went first to third on Austin Ulick's one-out single. Ian Walters worked a long at-bat, coming back from an 0-2 count to force the count full. Walters came through with an RBI single to give SIU a 6-5 lead.

"For me, that's probably the most proud I've been of an at-bat for Ian all year," Rhodes said. "When you look at Ian's struggles, a lot of those struggles are on left-on-left matchups. For a guy (Sherlin) who lefties are hitting .140 off of him, for Ian to hang in there at battle after battle after battle in a long at-bat, to get a slider that hung just enough for him to get it through the 4-hole was huge. That was a big-time at-bat in a tough left-on-left at-bat."

That opened the floodgates for SIU. J.T. Weber followed with a two-run double against Sherlin to push SIU's lead to 8-5, and Nick Neville drove in what turned out to be the decisive run with a two-out RBI single.

Peters (Winkler, Man.) was also 2-for-5 with an RBI for the Salukis.

"At the time, it felt like (Walters') at-bat was the dagger," Rhodes said. "Looking back, we needed every run we could get. If they don't come up with those at-bats, the ninth-inning is feeling a lot more pressure. That's why we always tell our guys, 'The game is never over. Never give an at-bat away. You never know when you're going to need that last run.' J.T. has been big all year long. It seems like he's been in big moments and been super-clutch in those moments."

With SIU leading 9-5 in the ninth, Dallas Baptist mounted a furious rally to bring the tying run to the plate. Jace Grady hit an RBI double with two outs, and Jackson Glenn followed with a two-run homer to get DBU within 9-8. With that, SIU turned to closer Trey McDaniel, who froze DBU's 3-hole hitter River Town with a backdoor breaking ball to strike him out and win the game. McDaniel picked up his ninth save of the year, and Hall earned his first Division I victory.

"To be able to get the victory tonight, I'm hoping tomorrow we'll be able to play free and easy," Rhodes said. "We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Hopefully, we can build on the resume that we have. You never know. If we win tomorrow and make a good run in the tournament, you never know know from an at-large standpoint where we stand."

UP NEXT: SIU and DBU will conclude the regular season at 2 p.m. on Saturday. There are 200 tickets available to the public at the gate on a first-come, first-serve basis.