The Missouri State baseball team (20-28, 5-13 MVC) closes the regular season portion of its home schedule, with the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament still to come at Hammons Field (May 23-26), by hosting MVC rival Indiana State (23-23, 4-14) in a three-game set. The games times will be earlier than normal this weekend, with Friday and Saturday both slated for a noon start. Road teams have won the last 11 games in the series.

Sunday will be Senior Day at Hammons Field, and Shane Elenz, Tanner Mattson and Chris Taylor will be honored prior to the game. The trio has increased its level of play lately, combining to hit .373 as a group in the last nine games.

Indiana State is 23-23 this season and one game back of the Bears in the league standings at 4-14. The Sycamores are 14-9 on the road this year, and boast a solid offense that hits .288. Chris Schmidt leads the club in hitting at .367 while Dave Brugamin, Nick Ciolli and Ryan Bond has each driven in 30 runs.

The pitching staff has an ERA of 4.82 led by Matt Shelton (5-1, 3.22 ERA), who is among the league leaders in opponent batting average at .220. Adam Lindsay leads the team with 25 appearances and six saves.

LIVE STATS INFORMATION

Live stats for all Missouri State baseball games will be available at www.missouristatebears.com. Just click "Live Stats" on the left side of the page and select the appropriate game.

Missouri State holds a 36-28 series lead with Indiana State, and swept the Sycamores last year in Terre Haute. In fact, the road team has won the last 11 games in the series, with sweeps in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

COACH KEITH GUTTIN

Missouri State head coach Keith Guttin (Missouri-St. Louis, 1978) is in his 25th season as head coach of the baseball Bears and has a career record of 861-530 (.619). Guttin became the first coach at Missouri State (in any sport) to reach the 800-win mark with the May 11, 2005, win over Kansas at Hammons Field. In 2003, Guttin led the Bears to the NCAA Division I College World Series for the first time in school history. Guttin has been a conference Coach of the Year nine times with three of those coming in the Valley and six coming during the Bears’ years in the Mid-Continent Conference. During Guttin’s tenure, the Bears have made seven Division I NCAA Tournament appearances -- six in the last 12 years.

This weekend will mark the final regular season home game for Missouri State's three seniors; Shane Elenz, Tanner Mattson and Chris Taylor. The trio has raised its level of play recently, combining to bat .373 (34/91) and slug .593 in the last nine games.

They rank first (Elenz - .417), second (Mattson - .367) and fourth (Taylor - .320) on the team in batting over that span.

Elenz has a seven-game MVC hitting streak, and Mattson enters the weekend on a seven-game overall streak, including six games in a row with an extra-base hit.

Missouri State suffered a pair of tough losses to Oral Roberts and Kansas. On Tuesday, the Bears led ORU 6-2 entering the ninth inning before the Golden Eagles tied it with a pinch-hit grand slam and added three more runs for a 9-6 win. All seven runs were unearned and scored with two outs.

Wednesday at Kansas, the Jawhawks jumped ahead 8-0 through four innings and held on for an 8-5 win. The loss overshadowed a career day for Kyle Paul, who homered twice and finished with 11 total bases in a 4-for-4, four-RBI effort. Chris Mackey also tossed 3.2 innings of two-hit relief for Missouri State.

QUICK HITS

According to the NCAA stats through May 6, Missouri State ranks in the top 40 in the following categories:

Ninth in double plays per game (1.13)

39th in strikeouts per nine innings (7.7)

Ross Detwiler appears among the NCAA leaders in the following categories:

41st in ERA (2.28)

24th in strikeouts/nine innings (10.8)

36th in strikeouts (85)

Shane Elenz is hitting .417 (15-36) in the last nine games with a career-best eight-game hitting streak that ended Wednesday. He is slugging .667 with an on-base percentage of .500, reaching safely 21 times in nine games.

Missouri State's middle infielders have carried the offensive load in league contests, with Tanner Mattson (.352) and Matt Lawson (.347) atop the team's batting statistics.

Lawson is a .353 hitter in 54 career MVC contests.

Mattson enters the weekend with a seven-game hit streak and a six-game streak of games with an extra base hit.

In the last seven games, he is batting .458 and slugging .792 with an on-base percentage of .552.

Missouri State is outscoring opponents 41-17 in the first inning.

Nolan Keane is batting .463 (19-41) in the first inning this season while drawing an additional six walks for a .532 on-base percentage. He has come to the plate 47 times in the first inning.

Missouri State has been hot this season in the fifth and sixth frames, batting a combined .330 with 15 homers in those middle innings.

The Bears' top two starters, Ross Detwiler and Scott Carroll, have a combined ERA of 2.63 in 137 innings but are just 7-7 and the team is 8-13 when they start.

The Bears ended their losing streak at 14 games with a 13-2 win at Evansville Sunday. The previous long was seven games in 2005. Why did MSU lose games in a row? Below are some statistics that help explain it:

Hit .245 as a team

Fielded .947 with 28 errors

Opponents fielded .983

Hit .221 with runners on base

Hit .214 with runners in scoring position

Averaged 3.5 runs per game

Ten of 14 games decided by one or two runs

The last time a Missouri State team lost at least seven games in a row, it rebounded to win the final 11 games of the 2005 season.

Missouri State is 6-23 in games decided by three runs or less.

Missouri State pitching recently had a streak of 65.2 innings from April 6-20 without allowing a home run.

The Bears bullpen had an even more impressive homerless streak, going 88 innings over a stretch of 32 games from March 7 to April 22 without allowing a long ball.

Ross Detwiler's streak of 14 starts going at least six innings and allowing three earned runs or fewer ended April 27 at Southern Illinois. Detwiler had an ERA of 1.53 with 120 strikeouts in 102 innings, and an opponent average of .169, in those 14 starts.

The 3.2 inning start at SIU was also the first time in 20 appearances he did not make it 5.2 innings.

Detwiler recently moved into seventh place on Missouri State's career strikeouts list. He has fanned 219 batters in his career.

Ben Woodbury recently went 83 at bats and 100 total plate appearances without striking out, the longest such streak in the MVC this season.

Matt Frevert is averaging 16.0 strikeouts per nine innings this season, posting a 0.50 ERA with three saves in 11 appearances.

The NCAA record for K/9 (based on at least one IP per team game) was set at 16.8 by Ryan Wagner of Houston in 2003.

This year's leader is Josh Dew of Troy, who is averaging 13.6. Again, Frevert has not logged enough innings to qualify for this statistic.

Frevert has pitched eight separate ninth innings this season, allowing just two hits to go with 14 strikeouts in those appearances.

Tim Clubb's complete-game and shutout against Arkansas State on 3/20 were the first by an MSU freshman since Brett Sinkbeil versus Indiana State in 2004. Sinkbeil's was in a seven-inning game.

Since allowing 10 runs in his first outing of the season, Clubb has a 2.88 ERA and .252 opponent average in 65.2 innings since.

Missouri State has turned 52 double plays this season. Second baseman Matt Lawson ranks second in the MVC as a part in 43 of them, and leads the nearest non-first baseman by eight.

Lawson already ranks sixth in MSU history with 353 career assists and ninth with 87 double plays.

The Bears tied a school record with five sacrifice flies in the victory against SEMO on April 3.

Missouri State has a .356 (21-59) batting average with the bases loaded and has walloped three grand slams.

Austin Todd has an ERA of 1.31 and opponent batting average of .145 in true road games.