May 20, 2015 Box Score
WICHITA, Kan. - Missouri State scored six runs in the first two innings of its Missouri Valley Conference Championship opener with Southern Illinois, then cruised to a 7-0 victory behind eight shutout innings from Matt Hall Wednesday afternoon at Eck Stadium. Hall notched his fourth-consecutive double-digit strikeout performance with 11 K's, while allowing just five hits to propel the Bears to their 13th straight win.
MSU (42-10), the Valley's regular-season champion and the tournament's top seed, advances to a second-round matchup with the winner of Wednesday's final contest pitting host and No. 4 seed Wichita State against fifth-seeded Illinois State. The Bears' current win streak rates as their longest since a 14-gamer in 1993 and represents the fourth-longest in the 52-year history of the program.
Hall (10-2), who fanned the side on three separate occasions, logged his 10th mound victory of the season, matching four previous MSU pitchers for the fourth-best single-season total in program history. The 11-strikeout effort marked the sixth time this spring the junior has fanned at least 10 hitters, while his 8.0 shutout innings stretched his string of scoreless frames to 29 in a row over his last four starts.
It would be the Bears' offense that would set the tone for the game in the early going, however. After Hall worked out of a first-inning jam by rolling a 5-4-3 double-play ball, the Bears' offense went to work immediately in the home half of the frame against SIU starter Chad Whitmer. Dylan Becker and Joey Hawkins singled to right on back-to-back pitches to start the rally, and Tate Matheny put MSU in front with the first of three-run scoring doubles for the Bears in the first two innings.
Justin Paulsen's sacrifice fly to right brought in Hawkins for a 2-0 MSU lead, before Spencer Johnson lofted an RBI double over the head of center fielder Braden Mosley and Eric Cheray bounced a single through the middle to drive home the fourth Bears' run of the inning.
Missouri State continued its hot hitting in the second, as Becker's double into the right-field corner chase home Matt Fultz from first to make it a 5-0 game. Hawkins laid down the 60th sacrifice bunt of his collegiate career to move the runner to third, and Matheny cashed in with a sac fly to right to stretch the margin to six runs.
Hall took over from that point, working around a leadoff double by Mosley and a Will Farmer base hit in the second with the help of Becker and Hawkins, who each turned in strong defensive efforts to cut down lead baserunners. Hall fanned the side in the fourth and again in the sixth to surpass former Wichita State pitchers Eric Sonberg (1982) and Mike Pelfrey (2005) on the Valley's single-season strikeout chart. The junior struck out Parker Osborne for his 147th punchout of the season, good enough for the No. 3 total in conference history and the most for any MVC hurler in a season since 1982.
SIU freshman reliever Michael Baird followed Hall's lead, keeping the Bears in check with six hitless innings before MSU got to the right-hander for an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth. Cheray coaxed a two-out walk to start the threat, and back-to-back singles by Aaron Meyer and Blake Graham pushed the Bears' lead to 7-0.
Making his school-record 28th mound appearance of the season, senior right-hander Zach Merciez took over for Hall in the ninth, and promptly closed out the victory and the Bears' ninth shutout of the year.
Becker led MSU's charge on the offensive side, finishing 2-for-3 with two runs scored and an RBI. Matheny (1-for-3) drove in two runs to lead a contingent of six different Bears who recorded at least one RBI in the victory. Baird struck out five and allowed just one run on one hit and two walks over his 6.2-inning stint, while Whitmer (0-6) suffered the loss for Southern Illinois (11-45) after allowing six runs on six hits in an inning-plus.
MSU and the winner of Wednesday's final contest will square off Thursday (May 21) in a 7:30 p.m. game.
