Fresh off of its first top-25 victory of the season over No. 19 Oklahoma State, Texas State (4-0) now sets its sights on a three-game series with the defending Big Ten champions, the Illinois Fighting Illini (2-1) this weekend at Bobcat Ballpark.
The Fighting Illini are coming off a 2-1 series win over Abilene Christian, where they lost game one 10-9 but rebounded to win games two and three, 11-6 and 6-2, respectively.
“[Illinois] hits a lot of home runs. They’re a veteran team and had a lot of success last year,” Texas State head coach Steven Trout said. “It’ll be a team [effort]. We’re going to have to pitch really well and play really well to beat them.”
It appears it will be strength versus strength this weekend in San Marcos as Texas State pitching looks to keep the high-powered Illinois offense grounded. Bobcats pitching carries an ERA of 3.00 this season, while Illinois is scoring almost nine runs per game after hitting .327 as a team in its opening series.
Texas State’s starters this weekend include Jackson Teer on Saturday, Sam Hall in game one of Sunday’s doubleheader and Austin Eaton in game two. Teer impressed in his Bobcat debut, but a longer outing this week would be ideal for Texas State as he only turned in 3 ⅔ innings last Friday.
Although no official rotation has been released for Illinois, last weekend’s rotation featured Tyler Schmitt, Ben Plumley and Julius Sanchez. Sanchez put together the best outing of the weekend by far for the Illini, tossing seven innings, only giving up one run on three hits.
Offensively, sophomore Ethan Farris is leading the charge for Texas State, currently leading the team in batting average, hits, RBIs and OPS (on base+slugging). Following closely behind Farris are Ryne Farber and Samson Pugh, as both carry an average of over .300.
It’s hard to spotlight just one player in the Illinois lineup due to the multitude of large numbers being put up in the offensive categories. Four Illini batters are hitting over .400 and two more are above .300 after the first weekend, led by sophomore outfielder Cameron Chee-Aloy, who is batting .455.
The Bobcats are already riding high after beating Oklahoma State and a series win over the Big Ten champions would be huge in keeping the early-season momentum rolling.
The series between Texas State and Illinois will start at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. Game one of the Sunday doubleheader will start at noon and game two will begin at 4 p.m.
