Prime 9
- The Missouri State Bears will look to level their season series with the Missouri Tigers Tuesday (April 23) evening when the two clubs square off in a 6 p.m. contest at Taylor Stadium in Columbia
- The Bears lead the series with Mizzou by a 29-28 margin, despite dropping their last three games to the Tigers, including the first meeting of the season last week in Springfield
- Missouri State's bullpen has closed out 163 consecutive victories — including 11 this season — when the Bears have taken a lead into the ninth inning, dating back to May 2014
- MSU has played the 21st-toughest schedule in the nation according to WarrenNolan.com, matching up against clubs with .500 or better records in 31 of its 39 contests to date, including 19 games against top 50 RPI teams
- Bears infielder John Privitera has gone 9-for-18 over his last five games and has multi-hit performances in three of those; the junior hit .533 in MSU's four games last week, including a three-hit game vs. Mizzou (April 16)
- Junior catcher Drew Millas has recorded at least one hit in 20 of his last 23 games and has reached base safely via a hit, walk or hit by pitch in 13-straight games
- As hot as Privitera and Millas have been for MSU, the Bears' hottest bat has belonged to Ben Whetstone, who brings a career-best 13-game his streak into the week; Whetstone has hit .388 (19-for-49) with four home runs and 17 RBIs over the course of his streak
- With the Bears' win over New Orleans Friday, MSU head coach Keith Guttin (1,272 wins) surpassed the career win total of Miami's Ron Fraser to move into the No. 19 position on the NCAA's Division I all-time coaching wins list
- Logan Wiley earned MVC Pitcher of the Week recognition Monday after tossing the first complete game of his MSU career last Friday; Wiley is 2-0 with a 3.20 ERA in his three April starts
Leading Off
After securing their third series win in four weeks over the weekend, the
Missouri State Bears will travel to Columbia to complete their season series with the
Missouri Tigers, Tuesday (April 23) evening at Taylor Stadium. The Bears and Tigers will square off in a 6 p.m., contest that will be broadcast live on the SEC Network.
The Bears (13-26) won two of their three games against New Orleans this past weekend at Hammons Field, using a dominant all-around performance to claim an 8-3 win in the opener, before riding
Logan Wiley's complete-game effort to a 6-1 victory in game two.
John Privitera hit .455 (5-for-11) for the series, while
Ben Whetstone capped a banner week with a pair of home runs and eight RBIs versus the Privateers.
Mizzou (26-15-1) will be looking to bounce back from a three-game road series sweep at the hands of No. 6 Georgia over the weekend. The Tigers, who knocked off MSU by a 14-6 score last Tuesday in Springfield, bring a 16-3 season mark at Taylor Stadium into this week's action.
Series History
The Bears hold a 29-28 edge over the Tigers in a series that dates back to 1975. Mizzou has claimed three in a row from MSU, including the two clubs' first contest of the season last Tuesday (April 16) in Springfield.
The Tigers hold a 16-13 advantage against the Bears in Columbia, but Missouri State has taken two of the last four games in the series at Taylor Stadium. MSU has enjoyed a string of recent success against fellow Show-Me State Division I clubs, going a combined 33-18 against SLU, SEMO and MU over the last 13 seasons.
A-Okay in April
Missouri State's offense has enjoyed a spring-like renewal in the month of April, registering a .291 team batting mark in its last 13 games since the turn of the calendar. The Bears, who hit just .209 while being outscored by a 202-101 margin in their first 26 games, have raised their team average to 29 points to .238 and out-homered the opposition by a 21-9 spread to slug .492 as a club in their 13 April contests. MSU has tallied at least nine hits in nine of those games, including five of its top six single-game hit totals of the season. Individually, six different Bears regulars have hit better than .300 during April, including
Ben Whetstone (13 games) and
Jack Duffy (11 games), who have each logged hit streaks of 10 games or more this month.
Veteran's Day
The Bears' resurgence has been fueled by a suddenly-hot veteran corps consisting of
Ben Whetstone,
Drew Millas,
Jack Duffy and
John Privitera, who have combined to hit .369 (76-for-206) during MSU's April hot streak at the plate. The same quartet has scored 46 of MSU's 95 runs and accounted for 46 of the team's 86 RBIs in the Bears' 13 April games as well. On the mound, fellow junior
Logan Wiley has gone 2-0 with a 3.20 ERA, the first complete-game of his MSU career and 22 total strikeouts in 19.2 innings over three April starts.
Big Ben Chimes In
Ben Whetstone became the second Bear in three weeks to earn on of Collegiate Baseball's national player of the week honors on Monday. The junior first baseman enters the week riding a hot streak over which the junior has logged six multi-hit performances during a career-best 13-game hit streak.
Whetstone clubbed three home runs and drove in 10 runs while scoring six of his own and helping the Bears turn seven double plays in their four games last week. The Overland Park, Kan., product has hit a team-best .388 (19-for-49) with four homers and 17 RBIs, while slugging .755 during his streak, which began on April 2. He leads the MVC in double plays turned (31) to go along with his .990 fielding percentage for the season.
So Fresh and So Clean
Missouri State's talented freshman class has wasted little time in making an impression on Bears opponents this season. In MSU's two-game sweep of UCA (Feb. 26-27) in particular, Bears freshmen combined to hit .412 with two homers, 11 RBIs and seven runs scored. On the mound, four rookie hurlers logged a 2.84 ERA with 16 strikeouts over 12.2 combined innings in the series. Overall this season, MSU newcomers have appeared a combined total of 136 times in the Bears' starting lineup, with five more rookies drawing a total of 18 starting mound assignments in the first 39 games of the season.
MSU's group of newcomers has been instrumental in the Bears' run production so far this spring, with six rookies combining to account for 72 of the clubs' 174 total RBIs and 21 of its 36 home runs. Sophomore transfer
Joey Polak has started all 36 games at third base, hitting .340 with seven multi-hit games in MSU's last 14 outings. Additionally,
Mason Hull and
Dakota Kotowski have recorded multi-homer games for the Bears in 2019, with Kotowski entering the weekend in the No. 3 spot on the Valley's home run leaderboard. On the mound, both
Logan Thomazin and
Forrest Barnes have recorded 11-strikeout performances. Barnes is the lone Bear to turn in a complete-game effort, in which he retired 20 consecutive SEMO hitters on April 2 — the longest such streak by any Bears pitcher in six years.
Wiley Claims Valley Honor
Junior right-hander
Logan Wiley earned the first Missouri Valley Conference Pitcher of the Week honor of his career Monday on the heels of a complete-game victory over New Orleans. Wiley recorded his first complete-game effort as a Bear in Friday's 6-1 win that clinched a series win. The Springfield, Mo., native struck out a career-high nine hitters, scattered four hits and four walks while permitting just one unearned run to notch his second mound victory of the season.
Wiley became the second Bear this season to earn the Valley's pitcher of the week honor, joining sophomore closer
Connor Sechler, who nabbed the award on April 1. Sechler played pivotal roles in each of the Bears' back-to-back wins over Indiana State that locked up a season-opening Valley series win for MSU. The Bolivar, Mo., product worked the final 3 2/3 innings of a 6-5, 11-inning decision in the opener, then piggy-backed a strong start from Wiley with 2 2/3 hitless frames of relief, striking out five more ISU hitters to help pave the way to the Bears' 26th consecutive home MVC regular-season win.
Bears on the Radio
Once again in 2019, Meyer Communications is slated to provide live radio coverage of all 56 Missouri State regular-season games, plus all Bears' games in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament and any 2019 postseason play. The broadcasts can be heard primarily on KBFL 1060 AM and 96.9 FM in Springfield with
Art Hains, Ben Goss and Corey Riggs describing the action. An online audio stream is available through KBFL's website via RadioSpringfield.com.
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