CARBONDALE, Ill. – Missouri State hit a season-high six home runs and Michael Yusypchuk opened a second consecutive series with a complete game as the Bears took out Southern Illinois 12-1 in seven innings Sunday at Itchy Jones Stadium.
 
MoState (15-13, 6-1 MVC) scored multiple runs in five consecutive innings to take the opener of a series between the league co-leaders that began two days late due to weather and concludes Monday with a 1 p.m. doubleheader.
 
Yusypchuk (3-1) scattered four hits and struck out four in the complete-game effort and got all the offense he needed on Caden Bogenpohl's two-run homer in the third inning. Yusypchuk is the first Bear since Pierce Johnson in 2012 to throw a complete game in consecutive starts. Johnson went the distance for eight innings against Oral Roberts (March 15) and nine versus Creighton (March 23) that season.
 
The Bears didn't stop there, however, adding three more runs the next inning to knock MVC ERA leader Alex Nigut (5-1) after 3.2 frames. MoState strung together three straight two-out singles and scored when Curry Sutherland was hit by a pitch before Bogenpohl drove in two more with a double to match his career high of four RBIs on his 20^th birthday.
 
Max Knight led off the fifth with a home run and Dylan Robertson later walked and scored on a Tyler Epstein single for a 7-0 lead.
 
SIU (21-8, 5-2) used a pair of extra-base hits for its lone in the fifth, and the Bears countered with three more homers in the sixth. Nick Rodriguez led off with his fifth round-tripper of the year to extend his hitting streak to 15 games, then Knight and Carter Bergman went back-to-back later in the inning to make it 10-1 and giving Knight his first career multi-homer game.
 
Rodriguez doubled and scored on Jake McCutcheon's homer in the seventh to secure the necessary 10-run margin for the run rule, and Knight followed with a double to give him 10 total bases on the day.
 
MoState's six homers were the team's most since May 3 of last season against Murray State, and the Bears have earned the run rule victory in all three MVC openers.